


Phenomenological

by Plinkoid



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dave and Rose are twins, Multi, john and jade are twins
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-04-18 01:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 45,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4687988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plinkoid/pseuds/Plinkoid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twin Paradox: A thought experiment involving two identical twins.  One twin stays at home on Earth, the second journeys through space in an ultra-fast rocket.  Upon returning home, the travelling twin finds that the twin left behind has considerably aged more.  </p><p>Dave’s life is markedly different from his twin sister’s, but it takes filling her shoes and meeting a second pair of twins to understand the differences that matter, those that don’t, and the true meaning of synchronism.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Selfish vs. Selfless

**[Summer 2011:](https://haydencalninmusic.bandcamp.com/track/summer) ** Selfish vs. Selfless

 

 **\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 8:11 --**

TG: just going back to our last conversation  
TG: you know  
TG: if only to instil in you the recognition of how batshit crazy it all really was  
TG: you want me to do a magical girl transformation and basically become amanda bynes in shes the man  
TG: or maybe the heroine of a bad shoujo manga where i have to infiltrate an all boys school to play sports  
TG: and then of course get found out by my love interest who is just oh so relieved he isnt batting for the wrong team after all  
TG: this is just your desire to bring your tacky mangas to life isnt it  
TT: I think we can both recognise that you were the one who was aware that such a thing was a popular trope in Japanese comics, and that I was sadly ignorant of such an intriguing fact.  
TG: i think what we can recognise here rose is that ive got zero sportsman aspirations  
TG: and that youre not asking me to attend an all girls school  
TG: so when im found out no ones gonna be all that understanding as to why im sporting the knee high socks and plaid schoolgirl skirt instead of the boys uniform  
TG: and thus youve made a terrible casting decision  
TT: I am going to take an educated guess that you have yet to go to bed, and that you have instead taken all those hours since sundown to come up with this draft of a reason in an attempt to turn me down.  
TT: Yet it was all in vain for I am not asking you to be Amanda Bynes, nor am I asking you to be one of those characters from those comics you love oh so much. Yes, you love them, or else you wouldn’t have used ‘magical girl transformation’ as imagery for your western reference.  
TG: ok but thats totally unfair  
TG: what kind of nineties kid would know zero magical girls  
TG: youve got to be a childhoodless teenager to not know sailor moon  
TG: she fights for love and justice  
TT: So I take it you are accepting my proposition? I do believe you have higher chances of becoming a real sailor scout if you are portraying yourself as a teenage schoolgirl.  
TG: look rose maybe if it was a weeklong deal but a yearlong ones a whole different story  
TG: and to be super honest with you youve got to be seriously overestimating me if you think i can fool mom for that entire time  
TG: i really dont know her well enough to pull this off  
TT: And to be super honest with you, Dave, I think you’ve always underestimated yourself.  
TT: In any case, I would suggest you hit your pillows. Despite what you think, your shades typically aren’t a good cover for your sleeplessness.  
TG: i will but im telling you im not gonna switch with you  
TT: We can discuss it further tonight when you come over. Well rested and with a clearer mind with which to make decisions.  
TG: youre the one not seeing one hundred percent clearly if you think im gonna jump at the chance to pose as you for a year  
TG: especially just so youll get to make eyes at your online gf in person for a whole god damned year  
TG: its not the deal of the century  
TG: but ill see you tonight 

**\-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 8:47 -- **

 

 

Dave drummed his fingers over the lid of the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket sitting on his lap. He was purposely drumming a beat different from the one playing on the car radio; the new Katy Perry song which had somehow managed to play every single time he’d gotten in the car with Dirk over the past few weeks. On any other Sunday, he would have been halfway through his rant regarding Dirk’s choice of food offering by now. And there was definitely something to be said today about bringing a bucket of chicken to Roxy’s weekly get-together dinner, the one also featuring candlesticks and carefully selected wine. 

Instead, Dave’s mind was involved with putting together an inventory of every single piece of clothing he’d seen Rose adorn herself with, and putting it directly in comparison with his own wardrobe. The army green hoodie he was wearing now was so old it still wore the marks of his old sleeve chewing habit. His jeans weren’t much better either as they did not even put up a good attempt to reach his bony ankles. Rose, however, he’d never seen put on the same ensemble twice. Though he still shared her face, her voice, her height, her frame, he did not share her elegance and her poise. Wearing Rose’s shoes despite their identical looks, he knew, would not give off the image of Rose to either one of their parents. 

Dave only stopped the obnoxious off-beat tapping of his fingers once Dirk addressed him. “Didn’t get much sleep, kid?” 

He wrapped his arms around the bucket instead, at least grateful for its heat. He wasn’t quite grateful that the two of them showed up every Sunday with an order from whichever fast-food joint they’d last seen a commercial for, but Dirk must have thought it was casually cool, so there wasn’t much left for him to say on the matter. Dave didn’t particularly like being called ‘kid’, for him it was the closest his father ever came to taking up that role of a parent. 

As far as he was concerned, it sort of rang as a sham. Sperm donors weren’t traditionally tricked into signing up for a parental role. Dave was born first, but there wasn’t supposed to be a born-first born-second dynamic in the first place. Thinking of dressing up as Rose, as the little baby girl his mother had decided she would be better fit at raising, actually sort of made Dave feel sick. 

“No way, bro. I was in bed by nine.” 

Sort of made him feel sick, but not too badly. Not enough to discourage him from adding some snark to his answer. So twins hadn’t been his mother’s plan. It wasn’t really all that bad, he was still an active part of her life. But the man raising him definitely had not signed up for it, despite being her best friend. And he definitely knew that there was no interchanging twins in this situation. No matter how many times Rose would ask him. 

“By nine in the morning, yeah, I know.” 

Dave sensed no sense of reprimanding in Dirk’s words, and so felt it acceptable to not put in an effort to deny the claim. They’d made the turn into the neighbourhood where the missing part of their family resided. As he had one hundred times before, Dave marvelled at the idea that such a different scenery could be found only a few minutes from his own neighbourhood. He understood what was the basis of that difference, however. Dirk lived in an area built and designed for bachelors, he hadn’t moved upon accepting Dave into his life. Roxy and Rose, on the other hand, lived on a street where Dirk had to slow the car down, only to make sure not to run any children over. 

“You know. Roxy always asks us to bring the dessert. Do you think we should try one day, instead of hunting down the most suspicious looking piece of meat?” Dave mused aloud as they pulled into the house’s driveway. He figured he couldn’t seem all too lost in his thoughts. If he did end up caving in to Rose’s requests, he wasn’t all that positive their father would accept a year in Haiti if Dave was setting himself up to be pensive and withdrawn. 

His guardian seemed all but unaffected though, as he unbuckled himself, and, instead of answering, told him: “Make sure to call her Mom in there.” 

He didn’t have to be told. He knew to keep that up in front of both of the Lalondes, and even over pesterchum with Rose, he made the effort to refer to their mother as just that. He followed Dirk out of the car, up the hill of the driveway, and to the familiar front door. Of course, he kept the bucket in his own arms. When he’d been younger, he’d been scared that if he was the one to present himself with the bag from McDonald’s, it would simply seem as if it had been his idea of an appropriate element for their dinner. By now, he knew it was well established that he didn’t touch the food they brought over, and had thus made a valid case for his innocence. 

Rose was the one to open the door, even before they’d stopped before it. Dave found himself averting his eyes, unwilling to compare the neatness of her white collar over her black dress to his own attire, as he’d already prepared himself to do back in the car earlier. 

“Ah, yes, I see you’ve brought Colonel Sanders’ precious recipe.” That was her opening line as she ushered them inside, but he knew immediately that there was no malicious element to her comment. Dave’s lips lifted slightly, it was true that if he never touched the food he brought over, Rose was always the first to take some, in surprising contrast. Despite this not being his home, he felt welcome into it as if it truly were. 

A few pleasantries were exchanged on the way to the dining room, and it seemed clear to Dave that the only reason Rose wasn’t leading him away from the crowd of four was that she knew dinner was ready to be served. Indeed, soon they were all seated. Dave faced Rose, serving himself spoonful after spoonful of the pearled couscous dish prepared by his mother, and Rose faced Dave, taking a generous portion from the bucket the Strider duo had brought in. Dave made sure to answer any question Roxy had for him with enthusiasm he never showed towards Dirk – not at home, anyway – in a continued attempt he’d been making his whole life to come off as someone who felt fulfilled and accomplished. As for Rose, she made sure to answer any question brought by Dirk as evasively as possible, with a smirk that Dave was only just now studying with worry. He probably couldn’t contort his face to imitate that expression faithfully. 

The kicks he received in the shins from Rose as he scooped the food into his mouth at a languorous pace did little to motivate him to eat quicker. In fact, the expression on her face made it all worth it as he finally finished his plate, set his cutlery down, and immediately offered to take care of the dishes and the tables. 

“Mother, I have not seen Dave all week. Surely, I can steal him away from the two of you?” She was quicker to reply to Dave’s offer, by simply waving it down as she pushed her chair back and promptly stood up. 

Dave put his hand to his chin instead, remaining seated and smiling. “I totally insist, it’s the least I can do. After all, we didn’t bring a dessert, for what has to be the thousandth time.” 

Their mother laughed, sensing an unspoken battle between the two twins, but not too concerned in what that could be about. “I think Rose has missed you quite a bit this week, Dave. She’s been agitated all day long in anticipation.” 

Rose had marched around the table as her mother had revealed that piece of information oh so sweetly, and had pulled Dave’s chair back for him. “That’s right, Dave. It’s been so lonely without you. Now, let’s go.” 

Dave sent an alarmed look in his guardian’s direction, but Dirk did nothing more than shrug at the silent cry for help. Though those interactions had been lighthearted, as soon as he found himself alone with his twin, being dragged by the arm up the stairs, the sinking feeling he’d felt since waking up mid-afternoon was back with a vengeance. 

Dave pointedly stared at the shape and appearance of Rose’s fingernails over the worn fabric of his hoodie as he repeatedly and subtly tried pulling his arm from her grasp. Admittedly, she wasn’t sporting any sort of manicure, though he’d definitely seen her wearing one in the past, but they had the allure of well presented nails. Dave? He would forget to clip his left nails, after completing the ones on his right hand, and would always make his hangnails worse. Rose’s hands gave the impression that she cared for her presentation; Dave’s hands gave the impression that he knew about being nervous. Having the same shape and size of hands didn’t change a thing about that. 

He considered the things he was picking up on now, well, as easy to pick up on. All of the inadequacy he suffered through when putting himself up against his twin had absolutely nothing on the fact that their differences weren’t as invincible as they might appear to be upon first glance. Rose’s hand unwrapped from around his arm only once the door was shut behind them, inside her bedroom. He didn’t need to glance around to understand that Rose’s room would be hard for him to navigate. Rose would be escaping to another country, where it was expected that she could not recognise her surroundings, Dave however… Dave, however, only had the unmade bed as a point of reference and of similarity between their bedrooms. 

“Well, take a seat.” Rose indicated the bed rapidly, heading towards her desk and retrieving a leather-bound notebook from the locked drawer of her desk. Dave knew she kept her fictional writings in a box under the bed, he knew because they’d spent a good number of summers laughing together as Dave made absurd notes and recommendations on the various chapters she’d start and abandon. 

Dave thought that much was embarrassing, and yet it had never been embarrassing enough to keep under lock and key. The notebook she’d fetched and turned open to a given page just as she had repositioned her chair to face the bed had justified a higher level of confidentiality. Dave concentrated on the cracked leather of the cover instead of the difference in his and his twin’s posture. Their mother had only put Rose in ballet classes for a year, when she had been four, he certainly hadn’t thought that eleven years later she would still be sitting with her shoulders drawn back. He pushed his shoulders further forward, hoping Rose could start picking up on the impossibility of calling the two of them interchangeable, too. 

Just as he opened his mouth, she drew a hand up, her palm flat and fingers spread out in a sign for him to not go any further with his thoughts, though her eyes were still drawn to the pages of her notebook. “Before you give me your final answer, I’d like it if we could go through a summary of the position we find ourselves in.” 

Something about the way she had formulated her opening line hinted at the idea that she had rehearsed it beforehand, something Dave was familiar with, and something that softened his resolve enough to convince him not to put up too much of a fight yet. “I’m guessing it’s your version of the summary? Don’t really know how you’d feel about mine.” 

The breath Rose took seemed charged. She did not offer any reply to Dave’s taunt, but rather put her index finger down on the first line, the first point of order, in a second sign that she’d meticulously planned out what she needed to say in order to appeal to Dave. He felt both empathetic and peeved. He couldn’t help but to put himself in that same position, fearful of rejection, but also couldn’t help but to get the feeling that her attempt was a clear one at manipulating him. 

“So, the situation here is that my beloved friend, Kanaya Maryam, is a resident of Port-au-Prince, in Haiti.” 

“You mean, your online girlfriend,” Dave stated blandly, not bothering to lower his voice as he tended to whenever he brought her up, though he did notice Rose’s eyes quickly dart towards her bedroom door. 

“No, I mean my beloved friend. Who I happen to have met online. And who I might be interested in, yes, but who is not yet my girlfriend.” She interrupted herself to rub her forehead, seemingly in irritation, and Dave made a note he desperately hoped he wouldn’t need that Rose did that instead of scrunching up her face, like he tended to do. “Look, the point is to get to know her better. There’s only so far I can get with secret video chats. So, yes, I want to see her, because, yes, I like her.” 

She moved her finger to the second line and Dave kept himself from commenting, counting on Rose to at least put in a good effort to plead her case. “So, yes, that was the second thing. Kanaya exists far away from here, and any hopes for a successful relationship will entail some time spent together, in person. And alright… Yes. The person keeping me from doing this is our mother.” 

Dave again had the urge to interject, but decided against it. He could sense Rose’s rare frazzled state and he was unwilling to push too far. Instead, he busied himself by concentrating on the feeling of the bedcover under the palms of his hands. At home, all he had were sheets. He’d never even gotten a bed cover. 

“As you know, she has a very stranger-danger mentality, and that is the main reason you are the only person who knows of Kanaya’s existence. So a simple vacation there is out of question. Though our family vacations are always great –and maybe I could play my cards right and make it our destination– as you know we never get time without the adults. As such, it would be a wasted trip…” 

Her voice had picked up a slight tremble, the same one he could see in her hands. At this rate, he was going to say yes to anything she would ask of him. Oh, why couldn’t they have brought over a dessert? Just this once? At this time, they should have been eating a dessert, at the table downstairs, and Dave wouldn’t have had to face Rose’s request at all. 

“So, this is what I’ve done. I’ve signed up for a humanitarian assistance program that has agreed to send me to Haiti for the next year. And it starts next week.” 

The next week part was the new part for Dave, and it was just enough to convince him to say something, anything. “Then, ask to go? Tell mom this will be the best thing to add to your college applications. Tell her you care about people who are suffering. I don’t know? Tell her anything that’s less selfish than coming up with a plan where I have to pose as you for a year. Or like, just tell mom you’re going to practice your already flawless language skills. They speak french over there, don’t they?” 

“French and Haitian Creole. But that’s besides the point, Dave…” She shut the notebook, but he noticed the tremble had gone away. She was swerving away from her prepared protocol, but it wasn’t out of desperation, it was out of boosted confidence. “That would work with dad. Which is what I’ll do. You don’t get that mom’s parenting style is… About as old-fashioned as they come. All she cares about is my perfect girl and student image. She wouldn’t let me go in a million years. If you asked dad? You’d go, no matter what.” 

“Well, he’s not going to buy your act if you call him dad, that’s for sure,” Dave retorted, only feeling a tad bitter that she’d referred to Dirk as such so openly. 

“Look, you don’t even have to worry about a thing. I’ve prepared and set everything up, you just have to live the good life. I promise.” She flipped her notebook open to a different page. “For example. I’ve been wearing the brown contacts for months now, no one will suspect a thing when you wear them too.” 

Dave didn’t immediately have something to reply to that. He knew their distinctive difference was the colouring of their eyes, though neither one had escaped from the clutches of albinism. Violet still seemed less aggressive a colour than red was. A few months ago though, a new distinctive similarity he’d found between them was the fact that Rose had expressed her self-consciousness when it came to her eyes. That had been the reason she’d given for adopting coloured contact lenses. Dave felt strangely betrayed. Though he’d never said a word about his feelings towards his own eyes, he’d still counted that as an amazing thing to have in common with his twin. 

“That was like, back in February? Why didn’t you say a word to me about it sooner?” He knew he felt grateful about her maintained silence though, he wouldn’t have wanted the sense of pressure he’d felt in the last week alone, drawn out for months on end. He still wasn’t feeling great about the eye thing though. 

“And I haven’t practiced violin at home in months either. I’ve told mom I’ve stopped in order to better perform in school. So you won’t be expected to give live concerts nightly.” 

Dave narrowed his eyes, unsure of how that reply could have qualified as a response rather than just a further suggestion that she could have alerted him half a year ago.

“And I’ve postponed our hair appointment as many times as possible so we can have hair long enough to actually be able to swap hairstyles!” 

His mouth fell open at that. He hadn’t even really noticed how the appointment had kept being pushed back week after week. Granted, he’d always felt it a bit silly that he and Rose had to attend all those sorts of things together. Same dentist appointments, same medical appointments, and, yes, same hair appointments. 

“So you’re telling me, you want us to switch this Friday? That’s sort of fucking soon, you know?” 

“I did tell you it was a week from now,” Rose answered briefly, turning to store her notebook back into its rightful spot, and proceeding to joining Dave on the bed soon after. “Friday, yes. I’ve booked my flight for Saturday, I’ve set it up so you have the least time possible filling in for me. Happy?” 

“No,” was his automatic answer. “No, I’m not. I mean, you’re basically telling me I have to be the one to file in the request to go off to some weird-ass charity adventure. ‘Cause like, I’m sorry, but no matter how much everyone is convinced that Dirk doesn’t give a single fuck about me, I still think he won’t be that lenient if I ask him to go off to some exotic half-island for the next year, the day right before it happens.” 

“Dave. Has he ever turned you down in the past?” 

He pressed his lips together. Rose had taken a seat immediately next to him on the bed. Their elbows were brushing one against the other, and even though both of them were wearing sleeves, he knew that their exposed skin would once again tell the difference between them. His elbows were in a constant scraped state from doing planks on his building’s concrete rooftop, upon request from his parental figure. Rose’s elbows didn’t tell that story, and Rose’s elbows would never tell that story. 

He answered, dully, “No,” knowing full well the reason why that was the only answer that could ring true. He didn’t want to ask too much of his father, and as such he rarely asked anything at all. It wasn’t as if Dirk had asked for a baby in the first place, it was just that there had been one too many. And the one too many was Dave. 

“And he has no reason at all to say no to this. You haven’t attended school a day in your life, you can do a year of homeschooling anywhere in the world. You’re agreeing with all of this, right?” She was losing her sense of composure, and it didn’t bid too well for Dave. It meant she already knew of her victory; she knew that where Dave was afraid to be told ‘no’, he was just as afraid to give that final ‘no’. 

“Not really? You’re like what, the highest performing student of your year? And your school is what, the most prestigious one in the city? Doesn’t really make sense that you think I’ll be pulling a convincing Rose when, as you said, I haven’t attended school a day in my life.” 

It made sense, he knew he was making sense. How Rose was finding sense in her position was beyond him. But she typically tended towards reasonable, logical thought processes, so this development could only mean she wanted this just badly enough to convince herself that what she was constructing with her words was something it wasn’t. 

“Maybe not, but we’ll do something about it once we get there. For now, I feel safe knowing that we both have the same head on our shoulders, and that you can pull off anything I have in the past.” 

Dave quickly tried to run through the information he’d been given thus far, only to conclude that the unknown unknowns were greater than the known unknowns. The uncertainty of the situation was pushing him closer to a great emotional vulnerability, and he could only wish that it would be limited to a few seconds. 

“Well, I like to think we’re not the same person, sometimes,” he confessed almost bitterly. Though it was true he often regarded Rose as the better one, and never the other way around, he still felt worse about the idea that he was utterly interchangeable. Being interchangeable with a better version of oneself was not ideal, he did not believe so. 

“Dave, come on! I would do this for you in a heartbeat, I wouldn’t hesitate. Besides, I’m the one making a gamble in this situation. I’ll be scoring perfect marks at your end of the year ministry exams, but I’m the one whose marks will most likely suffer. Why are you being so difficult?” 

That’s when Dave fully understood that he wasn’t the only one pushed towards vulnerability. Maybe the cause was uncertainty for Rose, too; uncertainty about what Dave’s answer would turn out to be. He was sensing, however, that it must have been a desperate wish to bring her plan to fruition. She wanted to meet this girl badly enough to show some emotion in her request. 

Dave didn’t care about school things. In fact, all he ever knew from his ministry exams was if he’d gotten a pass or a fail. It wasn’t the big bonus Rose was promising it would be, because he really didn’t care all that much about that stuff. He cared about being himself. He cared that he was able to spend entire days getting lost in a new interest, he cared that he had all of the time in the world to learn and to discover things that seemed intriguing. That was the freedom he’d always received, and the freedom he would be unable to maintain in the following year. 

He turned to hop off of the bed, taking a single moment to consider turning his twin sister down. If this is what she wanted, she could go for it herself. That’s how it had always worked in his life, and there was no reason for hers to be any different. Instead, he took a deep breath, facing her bedroom wall and her framed award certificates, as he gave his final answer. 

“You better put that dumb notebook of yours to work then. I’m not entering this blind. I want you to write down really clear schedules for me. And your feelings on this and on that. I don’t even know, I’m just going to need more than your looks, I need convincing information. They might not peg me as me if I slip up, but they might peg you as having some personal problems if your personality takes a drastic twist.” 

That was something he knew was bound to happen, regardless. Maybe they were bound by blood, but vacations away from the country were the only times where he spent entire days with her. He couldn’t predict her every reaction, but he knew he was going to have to improve on that, and quite quickly too. 

Indeed, he didn’t predict that she would follow him off the side of the bed, would wrap her arms around his middle, and would hug him tightly to her front. She didn’t tend to hand out free hugs. Dave deflated a bit, wondering if maybe she knew him better than he knew her. She’d given him the best sort of hug, where it wasn’t expected and in fact was impossible for him to reciprocate. 

“Thank you. I’ll bring in my homework Friday, at our appointment.” Though she tried to laugh it off, Dave considered that maybe she’d hugged him in that manner for another benefit too. It was the best way to disguise any tears that Dave’s answer might have brought to her eyes. 

He felt too weak to voice an answer to that. It had sounded as if he’d accepted the task willingly, and he certainly had meant for it to come out that way, and yet… Yet, he was still unsure he could do it. He supposed he could only take it one day at a time, after all he’d soon be doing just that for an entire year. 

They stayed in the half-embrace for some time, until, finally, Dave found the strength of his voice again, the voice that would soon be considered to be Rose’s. “Maybe we should head down, huh? Would seem pretty suspicious if we spend too much time together, and present ourselves as emotional wrecks right after.” 

So it was agreed that Rose would lead Dave back downstairs and that the night would come to an end soon. Though that did not keep Rose from whispering a few more words of thanks on the way down the stairs. Dave said nothing, but he soon wished he had. 

Their parents were in the living room now, Roxy speaking excitedly, Dirk nodding enthusiastically, the portrait of the best friends they’d always been. Dave could testify that Rose had shown him some photo albums which featured their parents behaving in the same way at an age much lesser. He could make the guess that only such close friends could stand such a weirdly broken-up family unit. 

“Back so soon?” Dirk was the one to cut off Roxy’s flow to alert her of the twins’ arrival. And before Dave could think of any sort of reply, Rose had stepped forward, and had successfully pushed Dave closer to past the point of no return. 

“Yes. Dave told me that there’s something he’s nervous to tell you, and I suggested you two could retire home early, so he could tell you and ease his thoughts.” 

She spoke with confidence, with none of the emotional frailness she’d portrayed just up the stairs. Dave didn’t rule it out as an act, he could tell her genuineness. But he could tell that now, she was making sure he held his end of the bargain. He had to ask about leaving the country for her, and she was making sure he was going to get to it soon. 

“Ease your thoughts? What’s going on, Dave?” Roxy exclaimed immediately, an overly exaggerated sense of worry displayed on her features. 

Dave dully glanced from one parent to the other. Of course, Dirk seemed totally unaffected, but his longtime best friend had tensed up right away. Maybe Rose had had a point with who would turn her down, and who wouldn’t. And it seemed now as she had successfully pegged Dave down as someone who was completely unable to turn her down. 

“Mother, I can tell you tonight. We probably should let them get home though.” 

“Looks like we’re getting kicked out, kid,” his guardian voiced the same impression Dave had been getting, and motioned for him to follow. 

As they stepped out of the living room, Dave pictured how terribly it would go if ever he were to escape Rose’s bedroom in the middle of the night in order to get a glass of water. He’d never be able to navigate himself throughout this layout in the darkness of the night, he’d probably walk right into those luxurious, Victorian styled sofas, and fall to a deadly concussion. Or he could hope that Rose was one to turn on the lights when guiding herself during nighttime. He realised, though he couldn’t put a stop to it, that he was starting to freak out about little details that no one was likely to pick up on. 

Soon, he was seated in the passenger seat of the night blue 2000 Hyundai Accent, hoping as he often did, that the motor wouldn’t start up and that they could swap the model in for something as alluring as the brand new Mercedes model Rose got driven around in. He’d asked for his guardian to unlock the car before giving his goodbyes to the other half of his family. He decided to shut his eyes rather than to observe the goodbyes that were easily exchanged even with him safely away in the car. The night had taken over the skies already, the radio would probably come up with that new Katy Perry song as soon as it would be turned on, and he was supposed to find some graceful way to ask for something that didn’t really hold any meaning for him. 

His eyes only opened once he heard the car’s door shut. Rose had gone back inside from the looks of it, maybe already online to tell her pseudo girlfriend that the coast was clear for their plan, but Roxy had remained outside. Her arms were crossed, and he soon found himself avoiding her gaze. She liked to play the part of the concerned parent, but he was never going to buy that act. 

Katy Perry’s new hit about a night full of regrettable moments was not the first song to play, nor was it the second, but it was the third one to play on their journey back home. Which meant that it would be cut in half, as a trip between the two homes, without detours, equated as much as two and a half bad pop songs. 

The break in music is all that it takes for Dave’s sneakers to hit the pavement of the underground parking of the complex facing theirs. An apartment building without indoor parking hadn’t been a problem for his father until it had been, but it had definitely become a problem before Dave’s existence had been one. He wondered why they hadn’t yet moved across the street, but it wasn’t anything worthy of mention or of question. 

“So, what’s got you nervous, Dave?” 

That had been the whole reason why the cessation of the radio’s sounds was bright enough of a green light for him to hit the ground running. Instead, he simply shut the door quietly behind him, and waited for his father to join him on their way up the stairs to answer. 

“Nothing I can’t text you about later when I’m busy not sleeping.” He figured that was an easier lie to swallow for Dirk. He was used to dealing with his teenaged boy who preferred communicating over text when only a room away, and who could find any excuse to avoid sleeping through the night. He wasn’t used to a teenaged boy who wanted to go make a difference in the world overseas, and Dave severely doubted there was anything of him he’d be able to recognise in the upcoming request. 

He supposed if Dirk turned him down, then he’d be free from this whole deal. 

He supposed if he let Dirk turn him down, he’d be failing Rose. He’d be failing Rose’s only wish she’d directed towards him so far. 

So he kept both his pesterchum account and his bedroom door shut for the remaining hours of the night. He pretended and even tried to convince himself that he was cleaning up his room, when he knew very well that he was making some sort of inventory, taking everything into account that he would be missing from his life in a very close future. Rose too would go without her usual possessions. He could be as strong as she was, somewhere within him there was the potential for that; and even if that too was a lie, he could repeat it as a mantra regardless.

Rose would have confronted Dirk face-to-face. Maybe it was reassuring that he was able to tell which actions Rose might take, but it wasn’t all that reassuring that he wasn’t able to execute them for himself. Instead, he’d reasoned with himself that his best chance was to contact him via pestering, somewhere just past four in the morning. 

 

**\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified  [TT] at 4:13 -- **

TG: so  
TG: what do you reckon is angelina jolies best work to date  
TT: I think Tomb Raider goes without saying, but surely what you’ve got in mind is something like Girl Interrupted.  
TG: no clue what that one is about  
TG: but ill just safely assume thats an insult  
TT: Suit yourself.  
TG: but what about beyond borders  
TG: it was a few years ago  
TG: or quite a bit ago  
TG: do you know what im talking about give me a sign youre alive  
TT: Sorry, trying to survive the trailer for this godawful movie rec you’ve just given me.  
TG: yeah i admit i couldnt get through it either earlier when i looked it up  
TG: but thats the first name google spat out when i asked for movies that dealt with humanitarian work  
TG: i thought it was good enough to deliver the message  
TT: What message would that be, exactly?  
TG: nothing really  
TG: but i signed up for humanitarian work  
TG: i guess?  
TG: and the flight is booked for saturday  
TG: and its a year long deal  
TG: and thats the whole thing that needed to be said  
TT: Well, geez, Dave. I’m awfully touched I was included in your decision process.  
TG: no problem dude  
TG: feel free to go catch your zs now that you know  
TG: i know thats why you were still up  
TT: Don’t think we’re not talking about this tomorrow.  
TG: but i get to go right  
TT: Sounds to me like you’ve made that decision, yeah.  
TG: thanks bro 

**\-- timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 4:47 -- **

 

**\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 4:58 –- **

TG: i asked the big man  
TG: or more like i told the big man i guess  
TG: or told him over text  
TG: this is my preferred method of communication for future reference  
TG: i guess thats pretty convenient for you huh  
TG: no awkward and stiff video chats for you only but the sweet texting palooza  
TG: though i guess you could always go with the ive got no internet access route  
TG: i wouldnt rec that though cause i know i need to talk to you anyway  
TG: and your mom listens in on convos right  
TG: dont want her thinking youve developed the habit of speaking to yourself  
TG: thats obviously my turf  
TG: seeing as im doing it right fucking now  
TG: i hear the birds chirping so ill take that as my cue to take a bow  
TG: just dont forget to find me as much info as possible ok  
TG: still dont think this is all as easy as you make it out to be  
TG: i want you to feel like you can count on me though  
TG: maybe thats the late night crazy talk speaking though  
TG: ill catch you on the flipside  
TG: on friday  
TG: love you or whatever

**\-- turntechGodhead [TG]  ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 5:12 –- **

 

 

He’d stayed off of his account until that fated Friday. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d hoped to achieve in doing so, however if it was to escape eventually feeling overwhelmed, it had spectacularly backfired. He figured, on that Friday morning, as he’d finally logged on and addressed the tsunami of purple text that had awaited him that perhaps smaller, irregular waves and splashes of purple words over the course of the week might have been easier to manage.

He’d always believed himself to be more of an expert when it came to wordy and transparent messages left in his sibling’s absence and addressed to his sibling. Rose, perhaps, was more accustomed to leaving a brief and composed request for Dave to contact her back. Her avalanche of messages was unprecedented, and as expected, heavy and condensed with information for which Dave actually did need to consider carefully and to read attentively.

In fact, he almost hadn’t been able to make his eleven in the morning appointment, as he’d been busy completing the reading and completing what preparations the message advised him to make. In the end he’d rushed out of the apartment without so much as an effort to tie his shoelaces, or even an effort to type out a single line of reply. He was ready to bet that was going to set Rose off; he hadn’t been oblivious to the growing anxiety in Rose’s tone throughout the days of the week pesterchum had indicated at interval. He had half the mind to feel guilty, and half the mind to recognise the fact that she could have called him up at any point in time, which she hadn’t.

Being close to late might have been the incentive he hadn’t known he’d needed to get through the day, to get through the switch. He’d forgotten all about his mind’s obsession with the infinite amount of traits and of details that didn’t match up between the two of them by the time he’d arrived at the hair salon, a small quiet chime of a bell announcing his entrance. He was much busier toning down his eagerness to see just how agitated Rose would look than he was remembering the heavy feelings of inadequacy he refused to admit had always haunted him to some extent.

Rose did not look agitated. Clearly, the week had only ruffled Dave’s feathers, and Rose had remained even featherless, so to speak. She hadn’t even turned for the chime of the bell, but rather had remained invested in her conversation with the person he knew must have been the one she had booked for the appointment. He could make out the sketches over the surface of his work station. She’d brought sketches of the hairstyles she wanted, for the both of them. If the switch was anything like a wedding; then Rose was not the bride who would fret over every worry, but rather the calm and collected wedding planner. Dave? Dave was bound to be the guy who gets cold feet, he could sense it now.

Just as he sensed it, he moved to turn on his heel and to take that long walk back home, but always with that same quality he’d perceived in his sister and her would-be flawless planning of both a wedding and of this terrible situation, Rose took control just as he’d been about to give up his. He thought it a bit unfair that she had yet to turn her eyes and to see him, yet, he knew, had still known before he had that he was about to bolt and to give up.

“Dave, come here.” She’d only just put her hand up to entice him to do so. But that alone was enough. Just that dainty line of her wrist reminded him that his body followed the same line, though it was often hidden behind the tension he carried.

The idea that the shape of his bones was the same shape as Rose’s bones shouldn’t have been convincing enough, shouldn’t even have rung all that true with him in the first place, but nothing more had to be said or done to get him to cross the salon and to take a seat at whoever’s workstation was adjacent to the one belonging to the man who allegedly could work enough magic on both of their heads of short and pale hair. It wasn’t even their usual hairdresser, in fact, he was under the impression that none of the salon’s other hairdressers were even around at all. He couldn’t help but to feel that what they were about to try to pull off wasn’t very close at all to the epitome of ethical, and that the emptiness of the room was reflecting just that. He would pick ‘wrong’ over ‘secretive’ to describe the ordeal at any hour of the day. 

“I don’t know about this, Rose…” Rose’s conversation hadn’t stopped once Dave had taken his seat, but now that he’d broken his stunned silence, both she and the nameless hairdresser had paused.

He recognised something hesitant in Rose’s gaze, and it was soon confirmed with her spoken words. “We were just going over the plan while waiting for you. Jim said he’s ecstatic to help us pull off our first prank on our parents. Unbelievable how we’ve never pretended to be each other before, huh? But it’s a normal twin thing, Dave, no need to look so guilty.”

So, that’s what they were playing at. They were playing it off as normal childish twins with normal predictable parents trying to pull off a normal boring prank. Of course, they weren’t going to bring in any fucked up family dynamics, or any plans to escape the country to see a girl Rose had met online barely a year ago. It was just some normal twin switching fun.

“Not guilty. Just nervous about ruining my hair over a dumb prank. You’ll go under the scissors first though, right?”

He’d decided to play along, but he was blatant in his lack of commitment and of mischief. He was aware it was some last resort tactic. He could play up his terrible acting skills, and convince Rose to jump ship before it was too late. Rose chose to disengage from that trick though, instead slipping her two sketches into the famous secret notebook he’d failed to notice before.

“Sure thing, brother. Wait until you see what I do to your head.” She’d stood up, ready to march over to the stations where hair was washed before cuts, and had handed the notebook over to Dave. 

“Just call me sister,” Dave mumbled distractedly, fishing out the two sketches from Rose’s notebook of secret plans. He’d gotten the message though; this was his to keep. This was Rose’s version of analytical homework, and Dave wasn’t going to complain about it. If Rose thought everything he needed to know could be found in such a compact document, then he could only believe as much. 

The truth was that Dave couldn’t tell which hairstyle was meant for him. As there were no names on the sketches, and as both were different from the styles the both of them typically wore, he was a bit at a loss. He hadn’t thought it was urgent enough to follow after Rose like a lost sheep, but in the end he found himself walking over, both sketches in one hand, notebook safely kept in his left one. He only approached as close as needed for his voice to carry, watching the line of Rose’s throat, her head leaned back into the basin in use. Wondering, if his own throat still had as clean of a line as hers did. 

“Whose is whose? Our haircuts right now are way more obvious…” He definitely couldn’t manage to figure out which hairstyle would be most suited atop a girl’s head, the same applied to a boy’s head, really. 

“I’m giving you an undercut. And by you, I mean my current hair.” Dave glanced at the two smalls squares of paper. “There’s this senior at my school, her hair’s bleached and part of her hair is shaved. Both those things are against the dress code, they’ve let her keep the dye but she has to wear this bandana as a headband to cover it up. It really looks great though, this is pretty much my one chance to get one as a teenager.” 

Dave shrugged, ready to march back to his perch, but stopping himself once he’d observed his own sketch a little longer. He glanced suspiciously at the hairdresser, who hadn’t seemed to pick up why it would be problematic for Rose to get a hairstyle banned from her school just in order to pull off a little joke, before asking a second question. 

“What about mine?” 

“Yours?” Her disembodied voice once again rose from where her head rested. 

“Yeah, my hair.” 

“A pixie cut? One a bit like the one Emma Watson’s been wearing recently. Did you know, she chopped her hair in relation to a new chapter of her life commencing? It could be symbolic for you too.” 

He scrunched up his face, instead of rubbing his forehead, like he knew Rose would do instead. There was a heavy implication in her tone that a new chapter of his life was needed. Why it was that she had decided that for him, he didn’t really care about. He didn’t like it, and that’s all he bothered addressing in his thoughts. She had no need to make such an implication. 

“Yeah, but I don’t have ten years of child acting in a magical school to make up for.”

“It’s feminine, but boyish, as well as something I could see on myself. What more do you want me to say, Dave?” She’d sat back up before replying, seeming to sense the flow of the hairdresser’s movements, and acting before his guidance and instructions. With the wet hair framing her face, she looked more like him, like when he’d catch his reflection in a mirror after a shower. He wondered if, perhaps, she’d look even more like him once the hair would be shorter, though from the looks of the sketches he would still end up with the shortest hair of the two. Well, in comparison to the top of Rose’s hair, anyway. 

There wasn’t more he wanted to hear, in fact, there wasn’t more he wanted to say either. He let the duo walk past him again, determined to seem unaffected. It was hard. He ended up standing, eyes lost in the fog of his mind, both notebook and drawings useless in his hold. He knew he wasn’t going home tonight. He knew he wouldn’t be using his bed in quite some time, as long as Rose’s plan worked in any case. And he knew Rose’s bed covers were something he only hoped for before, and yet he did not feel enthused with the knowledge that he would be resting underneath them for a long period of time. 

Eventually, when he did sit back down, he didn’t offer a moment of his time to use his eyes to witness Rose’s first phase of transformation. He’d stored their planned hairstyles away, and had cracked the notebook open to the first page. It was merely the table of contents, but it was enough to draw him in. Schedules, things she would absolutely turn down, things she would absolutely never turn down, her most frequent lexicon, her stances on controversial issues, topics in which she’d keep pushing, topics in which she’d back down… It was a lot to absorb, and maybe it would have been less to take in had he taken it one page at a time. But he remained stuck to the first page alone. 

He didn’t even feel much like looking away once it was announced that Rose’s hair had been completed. Figuring they were already acting suspicious enough, he did look her straight in the eye as she walked up to him. She still looked like herself, she still looked like Rose. Perhaps, it had given her an alternative edge which had barely scraped away at her classical veneer, but it was something different. He figured that, once she took out the contact lenses she didn’t need at all in the first place, both her intense eye colour and cool haircut would surely just make her all that much more attractive to her soon-to-be girlfriend. He pursed his lips together. Ironically enough, thoughts that led him to believing Rose to be selfish only made him feel a shade more selfish himself. 

“Dave is that you?” He was supposed to pronounce those words mockingly, but they rung with something much more negative, something that did not ring as a good omen for his role in the plan. 

Instead of getting lost in that feeling, as he often did with most feelings really, he concentrated his energy on guessing their hairdresser’s movements, as Rose had. It felt unnatural, but then again… It didn’t feel much different from how Dave usually held himself. He almost got lost in a different feeling then, as he sat down and leaned his head back, notebook clutched tightly between both of his hands, the feeling that maybe he wasn’t entirely himself on a daily basis either. It wasn’t worth thinking of. 

He wasn’t scared to get his hair cut. Just as he’d sensed when he’d first seen the drawings, their styles wouldn’t necessarily look bad on one another. It didn’t seem to mark a definite swap in Dave’s mind. He wouldn’t be ashamed of walking home with that sort of haircut, in fact, he was looking forward to it. Not that he’d ever tell Rose that a new chapter in his life wasn’t the worst idea he’d heard. Rose too, clearly looked comfortable with the cuttingly different style. Maybe it was that trust and comfort he felt in the change that made him confident enough to read through some pages of the notebook during the cut. It did not matter that strands of his hair fell onto the pages. It did not matter that the hairdresser, the one named Jim or so he believed to remember, could have stolen a glance of the sentences that made it very clear that this wasn’t an afternoon’s worth of a prank. It did not matter that he could see Rose fiddling with her left earlobe in his peripheral vision, a habit she had when nervous that Dave would soon be copying. What mattered was that with each snip of the scissors, Dave felt slightly better. He didn’t feel unwell, despite the extreme change coming up in his life. 

And when the notebook was shut, haircut complete with fancy hair products and the likes, and he could raise his eyes to meet his reflection; he still looked like himself. He looked like himself, but at the same time, he looked like he was someone able to do this. He passed a hand through his shortened hair, and his lips tugged only once upwards. 

“Looks great,” Rose told him, both hands resting over his shoulders as she appeared in the reflection as well. Their eyes met in the mirror, and this time Dave’s smile was a full one. 

“You look good too. That Kanaya girl won’t know what’s hit her.” 

His smile included teeth only once Rose’s facade cracked enough to force her to put a hand up over her face to dissimilate some of the embarrassment playing over it. He knew how it was. Everyone believed him to need more positive reinforcement than his sister did, and though the rate at which he received it was inconsistent, it always seemed a bit more forced when it was directed towards him. Rose was different, but Rose certainly would notice honest compliments coming from Dave, because there were very few. 

The moment at the cash register passed painfully slowly, slowed further down with the plain obviousness of something a bit more malicious going on than a harmless ‘haha we swapped’ gag hanging in the air. It was followed by more awkward shuffling into the sole bathroom of the salon, tension badly concealed with nervous laughter. 

“We can still back out.” Those were the only words Rose offered after a good moment of silence had passed. 

“Just teach me how to put in those contacts.” 

And that alone proved to be a frustration filled challenge. Dave wasn’t quite sure once he met his eyes in the mirror that all of that blinking, tearing up, and hisses of pain were worth the possibility of passing off as a person with plain eyes. He vaguely wondered if anyone would think his hair was bleached what with those dark eyes, and if they’d make him dye his hair based off the dress code Rose had mentioned earlier. He remembered that he was supposed to be Rose a few seconds later, and remembered the staff must have known of the albinism issue already. 

He understood what was truly bothering him once Rose had removed her own contacts and had picked up his shades. The shades he’d bought for himself on his thirteenth birthday, once worn by Ben Stiller, and the ones he’d counted on to create his own trademark. It’s not that he had come up with any specific reasons to not want to be like his guardian… But he definitely wanted to become someone different, no matter how many little steps that took. He didn’t exactly want Rose walking away with his shades. They’d probably remain packed up for most of her trip, seeing as she would have no need to pretend to be anyone she wasn’t. 

He turned his back to her, loosely crossing his arms. “Alright… I guess you should direct this clothes swap thing, ‘cause there’s no way I want to see you butt-naked.” 

“I can’t imagine it would be much different from seeing yourself butt-naked,” she replied, though she also imitated Dave’s stance and put her back to his. “I suppose we have to deal with underwear first off.” 

“We just keep our own underwear, seems straightforward to me.” 

“And in which universe would it not be obvious that you are wearing boxer shorts under a pencil skirt?” 

“The universe where I don’t want to put on underwear that was pressed to your crotch a second ago.” 

She sighed, but it was not a sigh of irritation, perhaps more a sigh of impatience. As she had pulled out the contacts of her purse earlier, she now pulled out a different pair of underwear from it. 

“I didn’t think so, Dave, who do you take me for? I brought you a pair, and I’ll keep mine on beneath your jeans, that way there’s no need for either one of us to wear fabric warmed by the other’s genitalia. I wouldn’t want that either, shocking, I know.” 

Dave looked over his shoulder, then turned to face Rose and the stupid light blue colour of what she’d pulled out of her purse. “Are you sure anyone would even notice if my underwear line was any different anyway?” 

“You’re not bringing any of your possessions at my house, and that’s that. You’ll just have to make do with what can be provided by my own closet, which is a lot, so stop fretting.” 

He fixed his eyes on the dumb darker blue bow centred in the front of the panties he was expected to put on as he unbuttoned his own dark jeans, the ones that were ripped at the knees, by wear and not by fashion. There were worse things, he reminded himself, Rose really could have demanded to switch their current underwear. And though Rose did put a hand over her lips to stifle a giggle when his jeans dropped, he still figured he could have made a sillier choice than his underwear featuring South Park characters. 

He handed the jeans over to Rose and she stepped out of the small heeled shoes she was wearing in order to step into the presented piece. He was impressed with her manoeuvring, managing to put the jeans on without removing her skirt, only removing that article of clothing once the jeans were zipped up. She handed the skirt over expectantly and Dave merely stared at it once it was in his own hands. 

“Now you,” she urged him softly. “Put it on over your cartoon underwear, then take that off and I’ll make it disappear, and put on the right underwear, like I did.” 

Dave crossed his feet self-consciously, still staring at the skirt he’d been offered. “I can do that. But you’re still turning around.” 

He expected another sigh from his sister, but when none came and she simply turned around, he was quick to smile and to get to work. It did feel like work, he was betting he would manage to rip the skirt apart before ever managing to attempt putting it on. 

“You need new jeans, you know that? These ones are too loose around the waist, don’t reach your ankles, and also, as you may have noticed, are torn at the knees.” 

Dave shrugged, struggling now to switch underwear without feeling too squeamish about the whole thing. “I like them a lot. I can just pull them up when they start coming down. And, I wear these high-ankled Chuck Taylors when I have them on. And, so many people pay extra money to have this exact same torn up fashion. It’s no big deal.” 

He ran his hands over the front of the skirt, trying to smooth it down. He sure as hell didn’t like wearing something that wouldn’t allow for him to throw a kick were Dirk to propose a katana fight, but he figured that if he saw through their gimmicks tonight and recognised Dave, he would simply beat the shit out of Dave instead of even proposing a fight. He took a calming breath, but the image of that outcome wouldn’t leave his mind. 

“Ok. Stay turned around, I’m passing you my hoodie.” 

He zipped it down, quickly removed it, and turned around as soon as Rose accepted it. He frowned at the wall as he waited. Rose was wearing a white blouse today, and he’d worn his black hoodie that would zip up. Surely that was symbolic in some manner, that he was switching from the darkness to the light. It made him feel a tad better, but not at all better enough to react well when Rose tapped him on the shoulder and handed him the blouse over, complete with a second item of clothing. 

“Oh, hell no, Rose. I’m not wearing your training bra. You’re as flat as I am, like hell this is necessary.” 

Rose eyebrows lowered, and Dave made note of that too, as he already had made note of many of her facial reactions. “We’re fifteen, Dave. I’d be expected to wear one even if my chest was concave.” 

“No one’s going to notice.” 

“You’re wrong. A lot of people will notice. It’ll fit you as well as it fits me anyway, don’t be childish.” 

Despite her warning, he did end up feeling very much like a child as she had to coach him on how to actually put the bra on. It wasn’t a lesson he’d expected to be taught in his lifetime. Neither did he expect Rose fixing the blouse for him and tucking it into the skirt. 

“Seriously? You told me not to be childish, now you’re dressing me?” 

“I dress well, Dave. I just have to fix a few things,” she said it naturally, as if it bore no insult. 

He thought though that it was a bit insulting that zipping up his jeans, and then zipping up his hoodie, was all she needed to compare to him. 

He’d almost walked out of there with his untied Converse on his feet, but she soon reminded him, and soon he was the one with the slight edge of height on Rose with the small heel of the formal black shoes. 

She adjusted her shades in the mirror, but he’d decided he didn’t really want to meet his reflection just yet. Though, finally, he could pick on something of Rose as she pulled her sleeves up with determination. 

“Hey, no. I seriously always wear sleeves, you can’t pull them up like that.” 

She was fast to pull them back down, but there was something in the moment that gave Dave a bad feeling. That small feeling and warning that he might just miss being himself. He didn’t word it, he simply kept following as Rose lead him out of the small bathroom. He breathed in deeply once out of there. Rose called out to the hairdresser as Dave licked his lips, wondering if they needed to be a shade darker for his presence to be even the slightest bit feminine. 

“Will it work, Jim?” She simply asked the worker, keeping a passive expression as she stood tall next to Dave. He’d have to correct her on that once it was just the two of them again, he didn’t stand straight. Well, he did by himself, if only for his back to feel better, but around people? The slouch was mandatory. He made sure to stand up straight himself now that he remembered such a detail. 

The hairdresser cracked a smile. “I say, so far, it’s a success.” 

More was exchanged between Rose and Jim, but Dave became distracted by the reflection he caught from far away, from one of the workstations. He felt like someone had coloured him in. He still didn’t see Rose in himself, but he definitely didn’t see the pale presence he imagined himself to have. He passed a hand nervously through his shortened hair, and promised himself not to do it again. Rose would curl a strand of her hair with a single finger of hers; she wouldn’t move her entire hand through the entire length of her hair. 

He was going to follow Rose out of the store, but in the end, he decided to cut her off and to open the door for her instead. She seemed to understand right away, and without Dave ever needing to tell her what he’d kept in mind earlier, her posture slouched a bit more, and her hands disappeared within the confines of the hoodie’s pockets. 

Their mother was throwing a goodbye dinner for Dave, now Rose, tonight. And that was the plan. For the two twins to be present, and to be convincing in their behaviour and presentation. And then, on the next day, the plan was for Dave to keep it together and to say his goodbyes to Rose at the airport. Beyond that, Dave just needed to play the game by himself. Nothing too complicated. 

But it seemed a bit more complicated on their long walk home as Rose reiterated all of the advice she had typed up for Dave over the course of the week. Dave would have much rather have stopped on a bench somewhere, and have pulled out the notebook from the purse he was now the one carrying. He would much rather face the entirety of the information he needed right now, rather than taking Rose’s advice bit by bit. 

“Don’t forget, and this is a dead giveaway. Do not look up when the name ‘Dave’ is called, make sure you look up when the name ‘Rose’ is called. Not just tonight, at school too. Your name is supposed to be the most attention grabbing word for your mind, so don’t forget it.” 

It was at this particular tip that Dave had to voice at least some of his feelings. Maybe it was the way she had worded things, worded it so imperatively, as if Dave’s name truly needed to be Rose. He got it, of course, it was exactly how he should be holding himself in order to avoid complications, he couldn’t hold that against Rose. Yet… 

“I feel a little strange, Rose… I don’t know. You get to be yourself as soon as the wheels of your plane take off. Sure, like, you’ll have to be me whenever you call home, or anything, but overall… Dunno. I won’t be getting a break from being Rose. I don’t really know how I’m going to pull it off.” 

He saw Rose tilt her chin up, but he wasn’t yet able to recognise what sort of emotion such a gesture was born from. It would be useful to know, but for right now, he was more interested in the answer she could give him. 

“You’re still Dave on the inside. Only the Dave I know would do this for me.” She stopped herself from going on, but he could tell she decided to go with her initial wording in the end. “I know I said I’d do the same for you, but I’m not sure I truly would. I mean, Dave, you’re the most selfless person I’ve met.” 

He hung his head. He knew Rose wouldn’t. But he figured that he could just play the part once they walked through Rose’s front door. For now, this was the only way he knew how to reply to such a compliment, well, any compliments really. There was a strong urge to prove her wrong, to show her how selfish he really could be, but instead, he let the warmth in his chest spread to his stomach. Though it wasn’t a compliment he believed he deserved, it was a strong compliment just the same. 

Their mother wasn’t around when they arrived home, or rather, the place Rose had always called home, and the place Dave would now need to call home. It suited them well to hide out in Rose’s room. Dave read Rose’s catalogued advice as he sat on her bed, instructed by his sister on just how to keep his knees and ankles together to achieve the ladylikeness he wasn’t so sure Rose was really even about in the first place. Rose chatted away over pesterchum with Kanaya, Dave had instructed her to rest on her back, knees drawn up, and to rest the laptop over her stomach and propped up against her thighs. At least, he knew he was really about that stance. 

He knew Rose didn’t need much advice to sell herself as Dave Strider for a sole night, but it gave him the distinctive impression that they were on the same level if he could answer her advice with some of his own. 

They did not exchange many words at all. And Dave wondered, though he was plagued with worries related to how he would survive the year, and though his twin was sure to be plagued with worries of meeting the girl she was currently communicating with, if Rose was at all preoccupied with missing him. They were surely some of the most distant twins when it came down to it. They hadn’t lived in the same home a day of their lives, the longest continuous period of time they’d spent side by side was in the womb, but… But when he looked over at her, though she had borrowed his stance, though she was wearing his shades and clothes, he was taken with the fear of spending an entire year without having her physically close to him. 

They both heard Roxy Lalonde come home, and they both remained quiet about it. In fact, it was only about half an hour after her arrival that she came knocking at Rose’s bedroom door. The knock was gentle, and she pushed the door open in a motion Dave thought to be almost delicate. 

“You two kids were so quiet up here, I didn’t even know—” She interrupted herself and Dave suddenly worried that maybe he’d done wrong to stare at the door before she’d come in. That had seemed to be alike Rose, his twin always seemed to sense happenings in advance… Rose, however, had kept her eyes glued to her chat client, and Dave wondered strongly if he should be imitating that. 

He couldn’t seem to look away though, even when his mother’s lips shaped up a perfect form of ‘o’. It seemed they’d been found out before anything could happen. That was probably a good thing, Dave told himself. 

“You two look so fabulous! I have to tell Dirk, I have to get the camera…” She looked as if she was about to step away from the door, but quickly she steeled herself in the frame of the door. 

He noticed Rose’s quick smirk and her even quicker syllable of a ‘thanks’ which finally prompted him to do something, do something he could safely bet on Rose doing in the first place. 

“A symbol for the start of a new chapter in Dave’s life. And mine too, it will be very different not having him around.” He caught Rose looking at him, and he smiled as caring and as malicious as her smiles always ended up being in his eyes. 

She must have known that this was him as Dave communicating how much he was going to miss her as Rose being around for him. 

“Oh, yes… Dave. I’ve made all of your favourites for tonight, or I will be making.” She checked the elegant watch adorning her elegant wrist, an elegance Rose had but that Dave would need to strive for. “So little time… But I’m taking a picture of you two before eating, it’s an important night.” 

She’d shut the door before even bringing her full sentence to an end. He crossed his arms over his knees, almost glowering at the door as he thought. It had less seemed as if she’d hurried away because of time constraints, but rather had rushed away because of emotion. She was upset he was supposedly leaving? 

He should have felt bitter, he thought to himself, his absence couldn’t be so marked if she hadn’t kept him for a day in his life. Rose’s absence would be marked, his presence was secondary to hers. 

“Can’t believe I’ll have to pretend to love all of your favourites,” Rose muttered eventually. 

Dave was surprised at her voice, and for a moment stared at her a bit bewilderedly. She’d said it in a tone that could have easily passed as his, and dressed up in such a way, leaning back in such a way, he’d believed it for a second. Soon, she cracked up at his face, and it appeared clearly to Dave that she’d sensed his mood and had attempted to lighten it up with such an offhanded comment. 

“Look, they’ll be so blinded by our new sense of hair fashion that they won’t have any time at all to pick up on any weirdness between the two of us. So, relax.” 

“You’re right,” Dave admitted, deciding once again to restrain himself from sharing the whole truth. Rose believed he was only stressed about the mission at hand, which, he must have been to some extent, but she didn’t know and didn’t have to know about his uglier feelings. She was incredibly perceptive, and Dave wasn’t against letting her believe she was more perceptive than that already incredible amount. 

He steered himself away from feelings, he knew, could never amount to anything. He was the only one behaving in an unfair manner by holding such resentment. He concentrated on his posture, on his pose, and on Rose’s written words. It was his second reading of what she’d prepared for him. It was exhaustive in a way, and lacking in so many other ways. 

Supper, to his great surprise, was fine. Roxy had fished out the sort of camera Dave would have liked for himself, and he’d gotten to smile at the lens, though it wasn’t much more honest than Rose’s slight smirk, he still enjoyed impersonating Rose’s usual, natural, snake-like smile. He watched, with only a shade of negative feelings, Dirk ruffle Rose’s new hair, and joined in when he’d started telling her it gave her a bit of a ‘douchey’ edge. Dave insisted over and over again that he was being gracious by taking second portions, appreciating the meal despite it being lined up with Dave’s tastes, and not his own. And finally he was the one to call for the night’s closing hour as he brought up Dave’s sure to be unmade suitcase. He only nodded in approval when Rose played along and confirmed that she’d pack up on the following morning. 

In the end, all he found to say to Rose was, “I’ll be seeing you tomorrow.” He understood when she did not reply. But he did not understand the feeling in his chest as he saw her climb into the aged car with their father. 

He longed to be the one going home. He longed for the feeling at the end of the day, when he escaped to his bedroom. He did not need to long for such a thing, what Rose had had always been better than what he had. And he was the one to take that life now. He jolted when Roxy’s hand touched his shoulder. If that wasn’t bad enough, he was sure the look he gave her was worse. Luckily, she was still looking down the street, where the car had disappeared into the darkness. 

“I know, I’m worried too.” 

At those words, Dave noticeably gulped. She’d sensed his worry, but she’d failed to identify the real source of worry. With that in mind, he had to ask himself just what it was worrying his mother. 

“About Dave?” he asked her, knowing that must have been it, but fiercely denying it. 

She stepped back inside of the house, and shut the door once Dave followed in as well. There was surreal air to the moment as Dave considered that, usually, the door shut on him, it wasn’t the other way around at the end of the night, it never had been. 

“Would you like some tea before bed?” 

Dave paused. He knew the answer because he’d read Rose’s notes three times in full. He knew, when a day finished and both Rose and Roxy were on good terms about it, they would indulge in some tea together before going upstairs to bed. Most nights, Rose turned it down in favour of spending more time online. Tonight, terms were good, but… 

“Just talking is fine,” Dave answered. He could pass it as selfless; he was doing it because it seemed like she needed someone to talk to. But he knew the core of it was selfish. He wanted to know what it felt like to talk, just him and his mother. He wanted a talk that wasn’t limited by the length of time it took to drain a cup of tea. 

And so he found himself, in the salon, seated with his knees and ankles pressing together hard enough to leave reddish marks that would be visible once he would stand. His mother didn’t seem to have her eyes on him though. It matched well with supper time, where most questions had been directed towards Rose. It had been some sort of a predictable blessing; of course everyone would have their attention focused on Rose, everyone wanted to speak to the person who would be leaving for an entire year. It made it easy enough for Dave to fly under the radar, but he knew that wasn’t bound to last. 

“What do you think, honey? Will it be good for him? You’ve been telling me so all week, but…” But, Dave had no idea what he’d supposedly said on the matter, because Dave hadn’t read anything about it in the notes that had been left for him. “But he really needs something that will be good for him. Maybe I’m just worried he won’t come back happier than he is.” 

She eventually laughed, the sort of laugh Dave recognised to be a weak attempt to conceal feelings that had been laid out too obviously in previous statements. He did it too whenever it came to hard conversations. 

“He seems plenty happy as it is, if you ask me.” He was thankful she wasn’t attentive enough to catch on to his very casual tone, which was quite unlike Rose’s. It was short from telling her for himself that he wasn’t unhappy at all, but that would do. 

She seemed to hesitate in answering though, and Dave still feared he might not have been cutting it after all. However, she simply told him, in what he found to be an enigmatic way: “Both your father and I have had our moments battling sadness. We’re a little better when it comes to picking up on it.” 

He surprised himself in thinking of Dirk before he did his mother. When had he been sad? Had Dave been around when that was happening? Had he failed to be of any help? Maybe it could be the reason he seemed so distant at times? Most of all, he asked himself, had he been too absorbed with himself to be the support his guardian had needed? 

Quickly, he reasoned with himself, Dirk and Roxy were childhood friends. The pictures from the year they’d first met looked straight out of a different era. They’d gone through adolescence together, and there was no greater bearer of sadness than the teen years, so Dave heard. There was no use in assuming Dave had failed something here, if he’d failed Roxy’s lifelong best friend, well… Then, surely, Roxy would not be worried for Dave’s happiness. 

Again, he couldn’t keep himself from jolting when Roxy put an arm around his shoulders, though her reaction to the startled movement was simply the offer of a gentle smile. 

“It’s a good thing to not yet be able to recognise sadness in others. Goodness, I don’t know what I’d do with myself if both of my children were sad.” 

He should have rejoiced in the fact that she’d referred to him as her child too in the sanctity of her home. It surely wasn’t a big show she put on for him, unless she’d already figured him out and knew who it was hiding beneath Rose’s clothes; but he strongly doubted as much. But instead of feeling touched, he felt a bit scared. 

“How do you know?” 

He didn’t agree, though the assumption made him want to slip through the floorboards and disappear. He didn’t agree, but he wanted to know more. 

“Because a mother knows,” she answered simply. He did his best to act normally as she placed a few strands of his short hair back into place, with all the care the movement could possibly carry. “He might be away from me, but I can tell when something’s off. Your father can, too. But maybe he’ll find what he’s looking for with some time away, right?” 

“Right,” he answered with a sound that rung dull even in his own ears. 

He wasn’t going to agree on being sad, but… He could agree to feeling off. More often than not, he felt like he was the world’s first attempt at Rose, and Rose had been the finished product. In that sense, he definitely could admit to feeling off. Somehow, even put so simplistically, it was incredibly nice to know that his parents, or so it seemed, did want something better for him than simply that off sensation. 

“If it gets worse.” 

She didn’t follow that thought with anything. But again, he felt something akin to fright. It was strange for him to recognise that he’d been too unaware to realise he had been in anyone’s thoughts or had been the one receiving others’ worry. 

“He’s got a good family, so. So that’s what matters.” He finally told her. 

She thanked him, but he recognised the way she acted after those words. It was the same way she’d acted previously upstairs, before dinner, when she’d felt too emotional to stay at the scene. And thus, he was the one to excuse himself and to walk up the stairs first. He followed the night routine Rose had written into the notebook, and in no time he was set under the bed’s covers and sheets, ready to turn out the last light on the bedside table. He’d adorned some of the more boyish of Rose’s nightwear looks. A set of white tank top and white shorts, and had left the clothes he’d swapped with Rose in the dirty laundry basket in the bathroom, as her notes had instructed for him to do. 

Nothing felt extremely foreign. Everything felt extremely overwhelming. He picked up Rose’s laptop, which she’d left on the floor by her bed. Thankfully, the credentials to access her account had been left behind for him too. 

 

**\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 11:24 -- **

TG: psst hows it going over there  
TG: went well here  
TG: just slipping under the covers as we speak  
TG: its going pretty great  
TG: looks like youre totally replaceable rose  
TG: so its good for now i guess  
TG: but like  
TG: this is day one of a million  
TG: or something closer to three hundred sixty five  
TG: its still a fucking lot  
TG: im sure rent could make a song to that and highlight every feeling that could be captured in a years timeframe but  
TG: point is  
TG: you know  
TG: what if i get like  
TG: leg hair  
TG: really bad leg hair  
TG: or anywhere hair  
TG: its gonna be a dead giveaway  
TG: holy shit i hadnt thought of it but what about face hair  
TG: that would be even worse rose  
TG: what if i sprout out an anaconda sized dick this year  
TG: none of these cute white pjs are gonna do a good job at keeping that contained  
TT: You will not be sprouting an anaconda sized dick. I suppose I have to be the bearer of bad news.  
TG: what if my voice drops hard what then  
TT: As it is, we are late bloomers. You won’t have to waste away personal hygiene products in an attempt to reproduce my yet to come menstrual cycle, and I won’t have to put a razor to my face tomorrow morning to shave away your imaginary beard.  
TT: Could puberty strike in the coming year? Possibly. Do I think it will? I do not. So far, there have been no warning signs, and I accept that. If they start turning up, we will deal with them as they come.  
TG: so this is going to work huh  
TT: I am positive that it is working.  
TG: cool but  
TG: hey  
TG: so mom was worried about me huh  
TT: Quite. You do see why it couldn’t be me asking to go now, right?  
TG: i guess  
TG: were you the one to tell her i was leaving  
TT: Precisely. I also told her you used my credit card to make payment of your flight ticket, because you weren’t ready to tell our father at the time.  
TG: you think everything through  
TT: It is what I am aiming for, yes.  
TG: thanks rose  
TT: No, thank you. You have a long morning ahead of you, though. Do not forget to dress sharply. I also need to get to bed, seeing as you’ve cursed me to prepare my things, well your things, at the very last moment possible.  
TG: thats what brothers are for  
TG: ill see you at the airport tomorrow  
TG: dont forget i go to bed late though  
TG: at least try to be convincing

**\-- turntechGodhead [TG]  ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 11:55 -- **

 

 

He sort of hated how those skinny jeans and that dark red sweater looked on Rose. Maybe because he knew it had taken her a few seconds to complete the look, whereas he’d wrestled with Rose’s closet for the better part of the morning. He’d been close to ripping the dress’ zipper out; how was anyone supposed to contort themselves well enough to put on those sorts of dresses by themselves? He’d thrown on a black cardigan, just in case he’d missed something when it came to closing up the back of the dress. And that was without mentioning the battle he’d gone through with his hair. He’d liked the style when he’d first seen it, but he hadn’t liked what the pillows had done to it throughout the night. Rose’s hair? As good as yesterday. 

He sort of hated the attention she was receiving, but that was fair. And better for concealing his flaws in impersonation. He just wasn’t quite sure that he’d received that many hugs from his parents before, and to think he was missing out on them because he was busy being the sibling who typically received the most was a little frustrating. 

Most of all, he hated that Rose was leaving him behind. But he said nothing of it when he was the one to hold her in his arms, right in front of the gates leading to security checks. He squeezed her tightly, and there was a lot to silently exchange then, a lot to make sure of. Did Rose still have her own passport? Did they succeed in switching all other pieces of identification they had, or had they forgotten one? Was her leaving with her passport while her name was still on the school roster going to drag in some problems eventually? 

They didn’t say a word to one another. And just like that, she was gone, collected despite emotions Dave could only guess at. Maybe anticipation? Anxiety? Excitement? 

But they stood, both Dave and his parents, in front of the gates for quite a while longer. 

“We could go out for ice cream,” Dave finally proposed, still sensing that it wasn’t quite what Rose would have said in his place, but feeling it was light enough and happy enough to do some good rather than harm. 

“Thanks, kiddo. Think I’ll be heading home though.” 

Dave didn’t have much of an occasion to stare at the man who’d kept him for his entire life, but what he caught in that moment was anything but stabilising. He realised, in the presence of it, that Dirk’s sadness was very palpable and very obvious. Roxy said nothing about his exit then, though it came with no farewell at all. 

Again, she was the one to wrap an arm around Dave’s shoulders to bring him comfort. 

“It’ll just take some getting used to.” 

Dave had to remind himself that it was a good thing that everyone’s attention was concentrated on Rose again, even though he was the one taking Rose’s place now. It was a good thing, it left him more room for mistake. 

He would be too busy to worry about who was paying attention to him and who wasn’t soon enough anyway. School would be more demanding than wearing Rose’s clothes, or putting in contact lenses, or taming down his hair in the morning. He at least knew his mother to some extent. He didn’t know anything about the school environment he would be spending large portions of his time in. 

He did finally go get ice cream with his mother, but it tasted too sweet.


	2. Commensalism vs. Parasitism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So happy to be updating, despite my sea of midterms!!! 
> 
> In which other important characters are introduced. Hopefully you will like it!

**[Fall 2011:](https://harmonytividad.bandcamp.com/track/pretty) ** Commensalism vs. Parasitism 

 

Dave put his fuzzy purple sock covered feet up against the edge of the desk, pushed back and propelled the computer chair well into the centre of the bedroom. The wheels eventually stopped and he frowned at the fuzzy socks, his legs still extended outwards even in the desk’s absence. Rose still hadn’t logged on today. Dave felt she should have been up though, based on the fact that her alarm clock had just started playing the music box lullabies that made him feel blue in the morning rather than awake; but the wakeup call was Rose’s preference and he couldn’t mess with that. Besides, Dave had been up for two hours now. 

Rose was miles away, yet still in Dave’s timezone, and he was counting on her to show up. She hadn’t been online the previous night and had only shown up sporadically throughout the last week. He wasn’t so sure anymore if she really felt she owed it to him to be present on his first school morning. 

He shut his eyes and lowered his feet to the floor, the socks he’d worn to bed touching the floorboards gently. He’d given these to Rose a few years ago. They were of cheap quality, and he’d given them to his twin with little context, with no special occasion in mind, but he’d found them in the top of Rose’s sock drawer. He’d never seen her wear them, but their position in the drawer indicated that they were a popular choice. He’d figured she must have worn them at home, and had readily imitated that without asking her about it. 

Maybe, he thought to himself, Rose did owe him her presence this morning. He knew that her bedroom was, in his eyes in any case, the apogee of her presence. He couldn’t quite fully appreciate the deep connection he felt when using her personal items though, knowing that the experience he was having was bound to be anything but reciprocal. He did, however, feel reassured that if ever she did need his presence and he were to fail to reply to the call, she also had with her his suitcase, and some of his items hidden away in it too.

So he could convince himself that if Rose did owe him her presence she’d already carried through in the form of her belongings and of her possessions. Regardless, he would have liked for her to have been around, if only to add to his morning routine. Though the music of Rose’s high-end alarm clock had only just started playing, and he knew he was expected to let it play up until he would leave the room, he’d woken up with the first rays of the sun, a full two hours prior to the lullaby’s first notes. 

In the past week, it hadn’t been unusual for him to wake up before the alarm, and he did usually make use of his early mornings to jog in place in the bedroom to get his cardio going. He wasn’t athletic, and neither was Rose, but he was used to his heart racing at home with the various physical tasks Dirk put him up to, and that was without making mention of the frequent scares included in their home routine. But today, he’d already done that and then some. 

He checked Rose’s absent status on pesterchum one last time before standing up, flattening out the wrinkles of the checkered grey tones of the skirt he wore before heading back towards Rose’s closet. A whole shelf of her storage arrangement was dedicated to her school uniform, and that was where Dave had spent a generous portion of his morning, weighing which elements of the uniform he’d rather or rather not wear for his very first day of school. 

He’d picked the long sleeved blouse over the short sleeved blouse and over the polo shirt. He’d picked the cream coloured sweater vest over the cardigan and sweater of the same colour. He hadn’t been thrilled that the choice of the skirt really wasn’t a choice at all, but it had still been fun to imagine that he had some sort of control over his choice in wardrobe. He hadn’t changed into the school socks yet. He admittedly hadn’t been so excited that private schools really did feature knee high socks. There were black tights too, but he’d understood them to be for the winter uniform. He’d thought it ridiculous that the uniform would even dictate choice in socks, but Rose had assured him over pesterchum that one of her classmates had once been sent home because of dark navy blue tights, a shade pale enough to denounce her as going against the appropriate school uniform. 

Finally, he picked the white socks over the grey ones and over the forest green ones, and smiled at the best of the bad situation; the fact that, though shoes were required to satisfy a great number of qualifications, Rose had built quite a collection of school appropriate shoes. The beige moccasin styled shoes really weren’t so bad and he couldn’t say he wouldn’t have picked them out of the entirety of Rose’s shoe collection, inappropriate shoes included and all. 

He returned to the computer chair only once he’d added the footwear to his ensemble. He’d sorted his hair before adorning the uniform, and was now strictly sticking to his determination to keep his skirt-clad catholic schoolgirl form as far away from reflective surfaces as possible, regardless of how much he was patting down his hair in worry that it had stuck back up from putting the sweater vest on over his head. 

Rose wasn’t online, and the crux of that problem was that Dave was too nervous to sit around the room, to wait long enough to respect Rose’s planned morning schedules. He sighed, disregarding his best instincts by picking up Rose’s designer bag, the one she used as a schoolbag, and the one he’d poured the contents out of about four times on the previous night in anticipation. He headed towards the bathroom connected to the bedroom. 

The private bathroom, he thought, must have been his single greatest blessing. He’d reviewed every fictional work involving secret crossdressing, and in nearly all cases, bathrooms were the setup for great catastrophe, or in other words, revealing that very same secret crossdressing. Hell, he knew it to be the case even in the beloved comedic film of his childhood, Mrs. Doubtfire. He needed to stick to a no bathroom activity rule at school, and needed to take full advantage of the privacy Rose had at home. At least his life hadn’t turned into big enough of a cliché to involve boarding school, as he surely wouldn’t be able to pull this much off successfully in that given context. 

He diligently emptied his bladder one last time, and didn’t quite avoid his reflection as diligently as he would have hoped for when washing his hands. The truth of the matter was that, when contorting his face into the appropriate expression, he almost could believe that he would be entirely successful as Rose’s replacement, in the looks department anyway. He recognised the feelings playing out in the image of his eyes, false colouring and all, he could see he was confused as to how he should be feeling about this revelation. And maybe it was exactly that confusion that pushed him to leave his designated bedroom entirely and to head down the stairs to the lower level of the house. 

He made it as far as three stairs down. He hadn’t at all predicted that it would be a matter of ‘made it as far as’; then again there had been no attached guideline as to what would happen were he to fail to follow Rose’s guidance. Certainly, he hadn’t read between the lines that any movement down the staircase would alert the second resident of the house and would send her straight out of her bedroom, hair curlers still in place and everything. 

“Everything alright, honey?” 

Dave thinks to himself that this very moment in time must be his very worst or perhaps very best rendition of a deer caught in headlights. If he had the habit of widening his eyes in an almost comical reaction for any and every situation that called for any kind of reaction, he’d always done it behind the sanctity of his eyewear. Seeing his mother, straight out of bed, for the very first time in his life, called for wider eyes than he usually relied on, and, very unfortunately, were impossible to hide. 

So maybe he’d deliberately left his bedroom in an effort to feel different from the person that Rose was, but now he was experiencing tremendous difficulties finding words Rose could use in his given situation. The robe Roxy wore was oriental looking enough to easily be regarded as offensive, and Dave was certain in his knowledge that it must have been a gift from Dirk. The sleeping mask and curlers were things he did not need to know about, and he felt thankful he’d always shared hotel rooms with Rose over the course of their travels. And those slippers, the hideous Toads from the Mario world, but in pink, he could not even begin to imagine who’d bought those. 

Simply put, it was a fashion disaster if he’d ever seen one. 

“You’re all dressed up…” She looked over her shoulder and into her room, presumably to check for the time. “Did they change how early you kids start? This is absurd…” 

He couldn’t help but to avert his eyes when she rubbed her own. He felt almost guilty for seeing her in such an intimate setting, though he was acutely aware that it was not something foreign to Rose. Then the bedroom door shut behind her, he straightened up, and choked out what little response his mind could fabricate on the spot. 

“Just leaving early, thought I could walk there, maybe bus.” 

And with that, she marched out of her room, promptly making her way down the first five stairs before Dave found it in himself to follow after her. She used a casual, maybe a bit of a tired tone when she spoke next; “I know you’re getting to that age where you don’t want to tell your mother everything, but remember that your mother is not so gullible.” 

Dave honestly had nothing to say on the matter. Truthfully, he thought it a bit strange that Rose was driven around by their mother, who had her own workplace to get to, and he did honestly prefer walking to the school building. Clearly, he wasn’t displaying Rose’s characteristics though, because soon his mother was adding more to her inquiry, as she busied herself in the kitchen and as he stood by silently, hoping not to pour oil on the growing fire. “Are you getting picked up instead? Is it a boy?” 

A boy. Dave couldn’t even find it in himself to scoff. As far as he was concerned, the only boy he’d ever heard Rose mention was himself. Nor did he even have time to scoff, before he knew it, a bowl had been put into his hands and Roxy was out of the kitchen just as quickly. There was no question on what the contents of the bowl were. The contents were nothing but some obviously healthy brand of cereal, sliced strawberries, sliced bananas, soy milk to address both Rose’s and his shared lactose intolerance, and the spoon indicating that the whole was expected to be his breakfast. 

He marched out of the kitchen, eating as he paced around, trying to ignore the weight on his shoulder, the weight of the school supplies buried away in Rose’s bag, and instead trying to debunk the mystery of how his mother was so efficient in serving up such a breakfast at such a pace. He recalled his early morning prayers back at home asking the heavens to spare him one last pop-tart from the box in the cupboard he was hoping wouldn’t end up empty. All things considered, he did not think the cereal to be tastier or less tasty than the pop-tarts he could sometimes get his hands on back at home were. 

Then again, he had to wonder if Roxy’s efficiency was an all-around thing, because his bowl was only about halfway finished by the time she was marching back down the stairs; pink Toad slippers replaced by black stilettos, oriental robe replaced by her skirt suit, and her hair curlers replaced by the nice swoop of her lightly coloured hair which had always begged to be considered to be natural. ‘Put together’, were the words that came to his mind, and that’s what Dave had always been used to. 

“Sweetheart, sit down when you eat,” she reminded him patiently as she walked past him. He followed right away this time, setting his bowl down on the counter as she reached to grab a banana for herself. 

“I was thinking I wanted to head in early today though. First day’s a busy one, and I could help guide first years and whatnot. And, no, there’s no boy involved. There’s not ever going to be a boy involved.” He adopted the same tone Rose would whenever she would reply to the scenarios their mother would construct regarding her ‘future husband’, and hoped against reason that if she couldn’t catch the hint in Rose’s voice, she would be able to catch it in his. 

He kept a sigh of relief sealed behind his lips when Roxy shrugged her shoulders, grabbed his bowl to empty it in the compost box hidden beneath the kitchen sink, and set it down in that very same sink. She put the banana she’d picked out away in her black purse, and he couldn’t help but to notice that the name brand was the same as his schoolbag. The banality in her reaction was reassuring enough. He knew it was harder for him to get into the role of his sister in the early morning, but the morning so far had not set out to be completely catastrophic. 

This sense of reassurance was slightly shaken when she put her hand over his cheek and posed a single kiss to his forehead. His face morphed into an expression of sourness, but she did not seem to notice anything different in this rection. 

“I know you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself this year. Don’t overdo it, alright? We’re all proud of you regardless of your academic standing.” 

His eyes glanced towards the electronic time displayed on the chrome microwave and then back to hers. Maybe he would be leaving at the same time Rose would have because it certainly did seem like Roxy was addressing something she wanted to address with gentleness and with patience. He was unsure of how to reply. The inclusion of other people feeling proud of Rose threw him off, did she mean Dirk? Did that even matter? What had him even more anxious was her admission that Rose’s academic standing did not hold that much importance; when Rose had always made it seem as if it did in fact mean a whole lot in their mother’s eyes. 

“What if I wasn’t at school for a year like Dave’s doing?” 

“That wouldn’t change a thing.” Her hand was still over his cheek, and her smile had transformed into something sickeningly sweet, in accordance, Dave also felt sick. 

He attempted a small smile of his own, gave a small shrug that was meant to encourage his mother’s hands off of him, and convinced himself dutifully that Roxy was saying those words, but certainly couldn’t mean them. He had to trust that Rose was not an unreliable narrator, that Rose had offered him a truthful and complete portrait of her situation. 

“At this rate I won’t be early at all,” he reminded her in the closest tone he could muster to Rose’s preferred one. It didn’t seem to be a bad attempt. 

In little time at all, he was seated in the back of the car; Rose felt carsick in the front, but he still felt guilty leaving the passenger seat so desolately empty. He busied the time of the ride by memorising the sidewalks they passed, the twists that the car took, and the way that would lead him to school without Roxy's help. The silence between the two of them stretched out, but by what he saw in her expression in the reflection of the rearview mirror, it couldn’t be an uncommon silence. 

He didn’t come to fully appreciate their agreed silence until she pulled up in front of the school. He knew of the building, he’d passed by here before, he’d even come on the grounds to see the corpse of a hedgehog Rose had told him about after some of her friends had discovered it. They’d left it by an ancient oak tree, and Dave had felt too bad about the sight of its resting place to take it home, and so had only taken pictures. But, in all honesty, he’d never glanced at the architecture of the building, had never glanced at the students rushing through the entrance doors; had never imagined himself entering the classrooms or interacting with any of the students who weren’t Rose. 

Now, he was very strongly considering it and it was very much more tangible than it had been in past nights when he’d only just stared at his class schedule until the locations imprinted themselves onto his mind. His knees felt weak, and his resolve weakened when he put his hands down onto his knees, palms both touching the school socks and the school skirt at once. This had to be the craziest thing he’d ever done, and now that he was facing it, he was starting to question it. 

Maybe he could fake a sudden illness. He was sure he could. If he could convincingly act out a mononucleosis he’d be homebound for a month, a solid month. He just had to… 

“Don’t worry, Rose. One day will become one month, and one month will become one year, and you won’t have time to feel stressed about your performance.” 

“Yep,” was his curt reply. 

His feelings had suddenly switched. All he wanted to do now was get away from these conversations that could really only lead him to believe that Rose was the instigator of the harsh expectations that was put upon her and that it must never have been their mother who had been the source of it all. 

“I’ll see you tonight, mom.” The words were barely uttered at a respectable volume of voice, but he had to move away from this source of stress and on towards the next one. 

He didn’t look back at the Mercedes, he marched on forward, through the grounds’ grass rather than on the pavement leading the direct way to the front doors. The truth was that every other student was taking that path and he needed room to breathe. Every other student. Most students arriving by their own means, stepping off the bus, or turning the corner down the street. Most students with their normal school backpacks, rather than some ill-placed fashionable handbag. Students who were not even remotely close to being the sort of put together that Rose always presented herself to be, who laughed and joked loudly and greeted friends and comrades rowdily. And, for the first time in his life, Dave Strider did not feel self-conscious being Dave Strider, but rather felt self-conscious being Rose Lalonde. Rose Lalonde, his twin, the one person he probably held in the highest of esteems. 

It was only when it came time to cutting off the flow of students to get back on the right path that led up to the large stairs preceding the massive medieval styled entrance doors, that Dave found himself looking back to the luxurious car his mother drove. The car, predictably, was gone. And though he’d cut people off in order to start climbing the staircase, now people were passing him without another look as he kept his eyes locked on the spot where the car had been. 

Dark thoughts brewed inside of his mind as he advanced forward. Only the left door was held open for students to enter through, and this, somehow, bothered him more so than the weight of his thoughts. The reception, which Rose had described to him over pesterchum, was just as intimidating as he’d imagined it to be. He kept his pace up to other students’ standards. Rose had also explained that the first number of the classroom that appeared on his schedule indicated the level of the school on which the classroom was located. And classroom 147 meant that he’d be on the same level as the reception. And this all meant that he merely needed to walk around, pretending to know where he was going, and would only need to sneak into the appropriate room once that number would appear. Easy stuff. 

Easy stuff. It didn’t matter that he was slowly realising that, in this setting, being Rose wasn’t even good enough for him to feel comfortable. It wasn’t good enough, even though he’d never been good enough to compare to Rose in the first place. Any fantasies he’d previously had of leading a life akin to Rose’s were crumbling quickly, wiped away like a message written on a deserted beach’s sandy landscape. 

It felt like an interminable journey to track down the classroom, but once he’d entered and had turned back to check the clock over the door, he discovered that retracing his steps more than thrice hadn’t kept him from being ahead of time, and, subsequently, from being early in the classroom. The classroom, for lack of a better term, was loud. And in the same way Dave had glanced around whenever he became uncertain of his steps out in the hallways, no one had quite noticed his presence or his disorientation now either.

A glance towards the blackboard confirmed one of the possibilities Rose had told him of. Homeroom was the twenty first minutes of the day, in an assigned classroom, with an assigned group, and the seating arrangement was planned without fail; that much he’d known before entering the classroom. The seating arrangement revealed by the board was the classical alphabetical one. His nervousness increased when he had to correct himself from looking for the ’S’ of his last name, rather than the ‘L’ that was now rightfully his. But no one questioned him, if anything, he felt like a ghost as he took his seat, second from the back, second from the right. 

He busied himself for a few more of the long minutes that were left before the official start of his day, debating what he was supposed to pull out from his bag to place upon the top of his desk. Surely there would be no need to take notes? If there was, he could always pull his things out then, it was better than the hassle of putting them back after not having used anything at all. Of course, he’d noticed the trembling of his hands as he toyed with the zipper of the bag, and of course he felt the harshness of his heartbeats against his ribcage as he anxiously looked over to the movement of the clock’s arrows, but he knew of no better alternative than ignoring these symptoms altogether. 

When it happened, Dave had finally decided against preparing anything for his desk and had instead dumped his bag onto the desk, crossed his arms moodily as he yet again let his eyes move towards the door of the classroom. What happened was the only entrance Dave had cared to notice so far. There were at least two dozens of names scribbled onto the blackboard to illustrate the seating arrangement, and Dave had too much to sort through in his mind to add in any faces or names of students who he would never be able to relate to on any real level to his thoughts. But there was just something about this particular entrance. 

There was something noticeable about that particular pair of students and he knew as much immediately. There was something in the way they both stepped under the door’s threshold, in a sort of movement that reminded him of a ritual, that caught his attention. There was something about the choice they had made with their clothes, their matching choice of the school sweater over the school polo. Something about the flashy green of their shoelaces, something about their glasses and braces that did nothing to dull their obvious confidence. 

It was the boy who spoke first, in a voice that was easy to catch despite the distance. 

“Ha. Alphabetical, huh? Looks like another year of easy shenanigans then.” 

Surely enough, when Dave looked at the blackboard once more, coincidently mirroring the girl’s action, it wasn’t hard to spot the two juxtaposed names that were more than just a little similar. Jade Harley-Egbert, who happened to be the one who would be sitting to his immediate right, and John Harley-Egbert, who would be sitting directly behind her. 

“Curse the ‘a’ in my name,” the girl, Jade, muttered, “as long as you can guarantee that my hair will be safe from your scissors, I’ll follow your plans to the very end.” 

Dave was straining now to catch every word that formed on her lips. He didn’t miss the way she pushed the aforementioned hair behind her ear. He could understand the tragedy in a potential loss of hair there, it was worlds thicker and worlds longer than Rose’s hair had been when she’d swapped with Dave, and so understandably he could see it being a much more dramatic cut. His eyes only lingered for a moment on the yellow flower she had behind her opposite ear. He had to look away, despite the intrigue that was itching at his skin, as he had lost the luxury of his stares being shielded behind dark tinted lenses, which was something he only realised belatedly, once he’d noticed the way her surprisingly light eyes scanned the classroom.

He decided to pull every supply he’d brought to school out of his bag after all and to strategically start building structural symmetry on his desk. There were little words that came to mind when attempting to describe his state of mind. Fed up? Frustrated? Agitated that those two students had hopped into the class as if it happened to be a breeze, an enjoyable part of the day, and had immediately attracted Dave’s attention. Angry that he’d so soon found out they were twins, had to be twins, he knew it… There was no easier explanation to the way he felt called to stare them down. He was upset that there was a pair of twins who were more functional and much happier, and that by an entire and very obvious landslide, compared to his sister and him. 

None of those words were the right words per se. Dave still pretended he didn’t notice their quick activity throughout the classroom. But he was quick to give that up in favour of concentrating on the sound of their voices. Social butterflies, Dave had to tell himself, even though he’d never applied the term to any one person he’d met physically before. But that much was undeniable. They were moving from desk to desk with a strange resolve and with an even stranger motivation that pushed them to be loud about recognising whoever it was at the desk, or even louder about introducing themselves to other new acquaintances. 

The resounding replies of ‘I know’ following up their introductions were particularly telling for Dave. The line ‘I’m Jade, this is my twin John,’ was common knowledge in the grade, or so it seemed. 

And so he was counting on finding tremendous pleasure in playing up his total ignorance of their beings once they would unavoidably end up approaching his desk. Of course, that eagerness alone didn’t prepare him well enough to react quite so smugly when the boy, John, put both hands down on the edge of Dave’s desk. 

He stared at his wrists for a few moments, at the bracelet that peeked out from underneath his left sleeve, with the dark pearl shaped stones that didn’t quite seem fake or cheap, before letting his eyes move slowly upwards to meet his; which he did with the best image and aura of defiance he could summon. The boy seemed unshaken, Dave took it as a sign that he’d embraced Rose’s air of defiance impeccably, and didn’t quite catch on in time that this impression was very telling on the idea that Rose might not have been a stranger to him and to his twin. 

“Rose Lalonde. Where’d your hair go?” 

Thankfully, he didn’t have the proper time for his expression to reflect the processing of that opening line, and instead had to turn his attention to the second visitor, who’d grabbed his hand without invitation to do so. 

“I think it looks great, Rose! I’m Jade, by the way.” 

The words were indicative enough that he’d understood the death grip on his hand to be her version of a handshake. He squeezed back as firmly as he thought appropriate, quirking his lips upwards in his poor imitation of Rose’s alluring grin. 

“And your name is?” he asked, taking that pleasure he’d foreseen in directing the question towards the boy he knew to be named John, and who seemed very much aware of Rose’s name too. 

“Ha,” the syllable was dry, devoid of the forced friendliness that had been present in his fluttering about the class. 

He didn’t miss the interaction between the siblings, the subtle meeting of their pale eyes, movement made even more so obvious amidst the darkness of their features. He didn’t miss Jade’s berating air, nor John’s disinterested look, and he breathed in deeply to keep himself from believing he could see him and Rose making that very same exchange. 

Similarly, John seemed to inhale sharply, finally moving his hands off from Dave’s desk and, from what Dave could guess, giving in to Jade’s silent plea or demand. 

“I’m the piano accompaniment for the school orchestra. I have been since freshman year.” 

“Oh? I quit orchestra,” he answered simply. He was starting to check the door more often again, urging the clock’s arrows further forward more insistently than before, outright ignoring any quiet wishes he held for the minutes to drag just a bit more. 

“Yes. I know.” 

And then John's eyes connected with Dave’s instead of his sister’s, and for what had to be the first time, Dave truly did regret the artificial and dull shade of brown of his eyes when matched up against this person’s icy blue stare. And for the first time today, he knew his performance as his twin was a believable one. He knew because this person, John Harley-Egbert, was clear in his knowledge of Rose, and just as clear in his irritation of going unnoticed by her, and Dave had successfully maintained that dynamic. 

With that in mind, Dave was still able to recognise this present situation as a bad one. He wasn’t supposed to attract attention. And even though it had been Rose who’d unknowingly and firstly attracted that attention, he still felt the teenager’s stare to be a disarming one. 

“So, your name?” 

Dave could still see the fun in the way John rolled his eyes and in the way he threw his hands up in frustration and it was only the fear of interacting with these two that kept him from snickering. He glanced at the clock, though there was still a full five minutes of time before class, the twins had lingered at his desk longer than they had any other, and so he fully expected for them to leave. Instead, John seemed to run out of air completely as he obviously fought with himself to find words to express his outrage, and Jade seemed to have little other initiative but to pat at his shoulder mindlessly. 

“Seriously?” Dave couldn’t help but to put the pair out of their weird sense of misery, entirely spurred on by his distant attitude. “Calm down. How slow do you actually think I am? I had to sit here and listen to you two scream about your twin status for a quarter of an hour. Dunno if you noticed, but the names are written right there on the board, it’s sort of easy to figure it out.” 

“Well, that’s the whole point. You shouldn’t need a class list to figure our names out.” John crossed his arms over his chest with the words, letting the implications of his sentence hang heavy in the air. 

“Well, we’ve never been in any of Rose’s classes, so it may not be inconceivable, John…” 

Not inconceivable that someone amidst the school walls didn’t know of them? The mere thought was ridiculous to Dave. He’d fretted all night long when thinking of his potential disorientation once he would be at school, and yet no one had looked at him twice as he’d traced and retraced his steps to his designated classroom. He’d already had the strong impression that he was not unlike a ghost in this school, and that was true even under Rose’s status, it was hard for him to conceptualise that any student would hope for recognition from the entire student population, and yet… 

“You do know there isn’t actually anything special about being a twin, right?” 

He didn’t know just how strongly he believed in that thought though. Being a twin sort of had been a big deal in his life and, he was well aware, had completely shaped up his life to be what it had become. He did feel better when Rose was around, and it had occurred to him when he was younger that it had to be a real shame for other kids who couldn’t have that easy way of feeling better like he had access to when simply seeking Rose out. Yet, he’d suddenly felt differently about it when he’d seen the chalked up names on the blackboard. 

John easily wrapped an arm around his sister’s shoulders and, again, Dave tried imagining interacting that closely with Rose in such an easy manner. “Man, can you believe Rose pretends not to see us all the time, but actually, she’s mega jealous of the twin thing?” 

The urge was stronger than Dave’s facade and before he knew it he was answering, lacking Rose’s composure, and the calm upper hand she liked to preserve. 

“Cool theory. Except that I’m a twin too, asshole.” 

The curse word, combined with Dave’s sudden switch to anger, changed both of the twins’ facial expressions. He looked away in guilt, but caught at least two onlookers as he did so. It seemed foolish now that he considered it, but talking back to the centre of the class’ attention had, of course, put him in the beam of attention too. It was the farthest thing from the sort of behaviour Rose would have approved of. He was supposed to fly low and off the radar… 

“And if my twin attended school with me, I’m sure I wouldn’t make a federal case out of it.” 

Clearly, Rose hadn’t made any case out of it. These two were riding the waves of popularity just from being twins alone. And Rose… Well, he had the distinct feeling that even her friends had no knowledge of Dave’s existence. 

“You do?” Jade was the first to react, though her two worded reply seemed to accurately reflect the look John was wearing; disbelief and distrust. 

Dave was quite thankful that nothing more came from that conversation as their assigned teacher, a blonde in a polka-dot print dress holding up a cardboard box, chose that moment of hesitation that lingered between the three of them to enter the room. The calm and silence that spread quickly across the class tipped the twins off too and they broke apart quickly. Jade took her seat next to Dave and made him feel only slightly better by pulling things out of her bag and quickly matching up the busy state of Dave’s desk. 

John, however, forgoes his desk to head towards the teacher’s desk instead. This time, Dave doesn’t catch any of the exchanged words, but he’s still unable to look away from the way John shakes the newly arrived teacher’s hand, the way he gestures towards Jade, who then waves back happily, and the way he returns towards them with a smug look on his face. Dave's safe guess was that they weren’t only popular with the student body. 

Popularity wasn’t an issue anyway. He was supposed to aim for the opposite of that. He had to make this year of Rose’s life blend in with the rest of them. But there was still something about the idea that being twins had propelled the duo’s popularity that slightly irked Dave. There was something about their carefree approach and their quite obvious differences that angered him much more than that popularity. Dave was always going to be that guy who had Rose’s face but none of her success. There was nothing about his life that was carefree, exceptional, or deserving of any positive attention. 

The words ‘mega jealous’ John had used earlier didn’t seem quite as preposterous anymore; even though they should have been. They really should have been a completely incomprehensible notion. Dave hadn’t even known of their existence an hour ago. Rose thought them unimportant enough to never have mentioned them, or to even have given them a single moment of her attention. He was supposed to be imitating that approach. He couldn’t let them weigh heavy on his thoughts like this. 

“Take a seat, class.” 

Dave shut his eyes for a moment. The line seemed right out of a movie. He was sure he could pretend convincingly. He was sure he could do the studying thing. There was nothing to fear. Yet, he hung on to the teacher’s every word as she went over school policies, which seemed to attract no one else’s attention as they most likely had heard the same speech on previous years. The cardboard box was revealed to contain their new school agendas which were distributed down the rows of students. As they were passed along, he caught sight of Jade who, it seemed, really only had all of those things pulled out of her bag in order to draw away in her notepad. He wondered if John was imitating her behind her. His guess was no, but he certainly wasn’t going to turn to check. 

Before he knew it, the short period attributed for the homeroom portion of their morning was over with. There was nothing about it that had been particularly stressful, in fact he’d thought their teacher’s upbeat tone of voice to be quite encouraging. Despite the relief he felt, he couldn’t help but to be bothered by the frustration that hadn’t quite left him yet. He was pretty sure the only reason his mind had stuck to Jade and John was that he was a twin himself, and this was the only time he’d thought of other people who might have twins. But, he just had to tell himself that that wasn’t too big of a deal. He couldn’t simply take for granted that the two of them were relatable because of it, if anything, they seemed to be very far from being relatable. 

The class was dismissed. He didn’t linger for a moment longer in the classroom and was pretty proud of himself for it. Rose thought nothing of those two, and he was going to have to think nothing of those two as well, even though he’d been a bit provocative with them that morning; that would have to be forgotten and forgiven. It proved to be as difficult as the first time to find the classroom on the second floor for his literature class, thankfully he did recognise some of the kids from his homeroom, and could assume they were heading towards a tenth grade class too. It was safe reasoning, and he made it, again, early.

He didn’t have to confront any other students again, even though he caught himself checking around for the twins’ presence in every single one of his classes. His morning simply revealed that he felt stressed about moving around the school, and actually was quite incompetent at to boot. As for the classes… He was surprised by the slow pace they had taken, surprised that their hour class was dedicated to explaining what would be learned over the course of the semester and how it would be learned and, if anything, he thought it all seemed much easier than doing it alone at home. 

When his third class of the day was dismissed though, the little confidence he’d developed throughout the day didn’t feel like quite enough to help him head to the cafeteria with all other students. He felt guilty spending the allowance he’d received on Saturday to go buy his cafeteria meal. That much might have been silly of him, he realised, but… But, even if Dirk had never been short on money, Dave never truly was trusted with spending. He’d noticed that difference ages ago, on a trip to Portugal where Rose had spent left and right to gather souvenirs, and Dave had simply accepted whatever souvenir Dirk had chosen for him instead. 

It might have been stupid, but he wasn’t even very hungry to begin with either, so he didn’t exactly hesitate to rush into the first bathroom on his way out of the classroom, and kept a sigh of relief to himself when he didn’t hesitate to take the bathroom meant for female students. He took the stall farthest to the entrance door and simply sat on the closed toilet lid as he calmed his breath down. 

He knew he was panicking. He was panicking even though nothing had gone dramatically wrong yet. He’d attended his morning classes, and hadn’t even felt slightly overwhelmed by the course load. No one had looked at him weirdly. In fact, no one had really looked at him at all. Except those two Harley-Egbert kids… He put a hand over his chest at the thought of them though. 

Though he felt unwell, panicked, he knew it would be alright. They hadn’t been in any of his classes after homeroom. He would simply ignore them in the mornings from now on. He didn’t have to worry about why he was thinking about them this much. He missed his twin. He wanted that sort of friendly, upbeat relationship with Rose. So, he was jealous, so what? He would just have to look the other way, and he had full confidence that he could pull that off. 

He could hear another student in a stall nearby and waited for the bathroom to fall back into a vacant quietness to exit his own stall. He hesitated as the door swung open though, revealing none other than Jade Harley-Egbert, leaning back against the counter of the bathroom’s sinks, wearing a serious and intense expression she had not worn in class earlier. 

“I recognised your shoes,” she explained with a nod towards the moccasins he’d eagerly picked out this morning. 

He only took a step forward once she had voiced as much and did his best to concentrate his eyes on the bottom of the sink as he marched over to wash his hands, deeply aware that if she’d been able to notice his shoes, she’d also noticed the lack of flushing coming from his stall, and therefore his definite lack of need to wash his hands. His heartbeat was hard as he recalled the tactic he’d picked out for himself before coming to school. Never approach public bathrooms as they were synonymous to secrets falling through. How had he forgotten in the space of so little hours? 

“That was some deep breathing you were doing.” 

He glanced at her darkly, knowing she was alluding to the panic that had taken over him when he’d first sat down. She’d heard all of that, apparently. At least, his hypothesis of bathrooms being places of disaster was strongly supported by this one exchange alone. 

“I like to get on the toilet bowl and do some deep meditation before getting lunch,” he answered placidly, maintaining eye contact even as she seemed to struggle to react appropriately to such a shameless and unapologetic statement. 

From this close and under the intimate lighting of the bathroom, he noticed the flower behind her ear to be a hibiscus flower and he noticed, unlike what he’d first thought in the morning, that the wilted edges of the petals of the flower revealed it to be a real one rather than a plastic one. He felt beckoned to ask about its nature, but kept himself from it as he reminded himself that he was on the defensive and had to keep both her and her brother at bay. 

“Now, if you’ll excuse me…” 

He was ready to pull out all the stops, to shove her shoulder on the way out as he saw catty reality stars do the same on television, but instead she stepped out in front of him as he stepped to the side to liberate himself from her and from this situation. 

“I know we’re not friends or anything. But I know you put a lot of pressure on yourself and like, especially if what you said about having a twin is true, I think you can count on me if you need anyone to talk to.” 

Dave ran his tongue over his teeth, rolling the words he wanted to bite back over in his head before letting his words do as much damage as his eyes currently were doing, he was sure. Her tone felt deeply invasive and it took him a whole moment to associate the feeling in his gut to the feeling that had seized him on that day, days far behind already, that his mother had implied him to be a sad child. This almost stranger’s implied words of Rose being a stressed out child gave him the same uncomfortable vibe alike someone wrapping their dirtied hand around his heart. In the end, taking a second to reply did little to take the fight out of his words. 

“With all due respect, you don’t know the first thing about me.” Who was she to claim to know how much pressure Rose put on herself when he didn’t even know that much? He didn’t breathe in deeply enough to keep himself from going on. “Besides, how dare you imply I would lie about my family? Give me a break.” 

The same change that had registered on her face earlier in the morning when he’d snapped at her twin played once more over her features. It did little to bring shame to Dave this time though, instead he only gritted his teeth and took the firm resolve to stay away from an apologetic escape. He did, however, manage to exit the bathroom without caving in to the urge of meeting her shoulder with his on his way out. 

Leaving her did not prove to be much of an advantage as he came face to face with her better half directly outside of the bathroom door. The other half in question, John, had stepped towards Dave, phone in hand, words quick out of his mouth, ‘Jade, check this out—’ as if he could not have been bothered to take that one moment to check the identity of the person facing him. Of course, just a glance exposed that it was not Jade he’d come face to face with, but he seemed to barely falter at that. 

“Oh.” There was a small fleeting laugh on John’s lips as he passed the phone over to his sister once she was out too. “Hey Rose, you won’t tell on us, right? That’s like, part of the universal twins’ code of ethics, if you really are a twin, that is.” 

Because cell phones weren’t authorised on school grounds, had to be kept in the student’s school locker until it was time to go home for the day. Dave knew, because he’d listened to the rules during homeroom, and every other student must have known from years of usage and of experience. 

He overlooked what reflection he should have done to determine just how Rose reconciled being a rule breaker herself and how she strived to bring others to justice, and instead concentrated on his own issue. An issue Rose would not have encountered as it seemed crystal clear that Dave, her twin, wasn’t a topic that came up, ever. 

The opportunity to automatically lash out was conveniently taken away from him though, and Jade was the one to speak first, after a brief breath of laughter over the joke that John had shown her via the cell phone’s screen. 

“Family’s a sensitive issue, we know that. There’s no reason to interrogate…” The way she formed the words and addressed them to John was heavy with hidden meaning and undertones Dave just knew were not meant for his own ears. The way she glanced towards Dave after the words were uttered, with the smile of someone who was awaiting praise for a task well done, crawled under his skin and convinced him to keep the affronted expression that had crept up on him already. 

“What are you talking about?” John took a step towards her, angling himself towards her in the same move and doing an exemplary job at being about two hundred percent less discreet than his sister had been in passing a message she hadn’t meant for Dave to grasp. “We spent all morning passing notes to come up with killer questions to find out if she was telling the truth about being a twin.” 

Jade’s eyes stayed locked on Dave’s, a wide smile showcasing the considerably straight rows of teeth underneath their metallic shells and showcasing just as much of her discomfort towards John’s blatant tactlessness and refusal to pick up on the hint that this was to be a subject not to bring up around their classmate. 

“No, of course not, John. They’re just questions to find out if Rose here has had a similar experience to ours, seeing as it’s not everyday we get to speak to other twins, right, John?” She impacted his name with a lot of meaning, keeping her eyes on Dave without pause still. 

“Well, apparently we actually do, it’s just that some people think it’s a great secret to keep, I guess.” He turned to give Dave a dark, accusatory glance. 

Dave understood what the look was about. It was the look of someone who’d attempted to engage Rose in conversation in the past, maybe several times, and who now felt cheated that she’d had an ideal topic to bring up in order to bond with them, and instead had kept her silence. But it was the same look Dave wanted to give Rose too. He felt the same sensation of betrayal that he was guessing in John’s stance now. Why hadn’t he mattered enough to ever bring up? Hell, he knew, had he been the one who had been the violinist stuck with some eager pianist who also happened to be a twin, he probably would have brought it up. He would have been excited to bring it up. But given the circumstances, he could only accept the glare John was giving him willingly and ignore whatever small positive take he had on things. The small positive thought that there was maybe someone he could connect to, and that maybe these two were people who qualified as ‘someone’. 

Dave takes a moment to absorb the dark look and to consider what would be the most believable embodiment of Rose at the moment. Certainly not the truth, as it made him feel resentful. But maybe his own truth, wrapped up in Rose’s careful presentation. That much he could do. 

“As Jade said, familial arrangements can be of a sensitive nature. It would seem the two of you have an ideal arrangement in which you both see each other quite frequently, daily. That isn’t the case I find myself in, so it’s understandable that it would be sorer of a topic for me.” 

He blinked once, twice, ran his tongue over his teeth. The words weren’t bad, he didn’t think they were. But the delivery was, it was a slow delivery, as if he was searching for those words that could pass as ‘not bad’, and he truly had been. He was met with two pairs of understanding, sympathetic eyes though, and obviously his call for pity had been enough of a leap to blindside the pair from discovering his presence to be an unnatural one. 

And then John reached out towards Dave, maybe to hold his shoulder sympathetically or to pose a gesture alike that one, nonetheless Dave’s small moment of victoriously picking words that were not too bad shattered quickly as Dave took a step back. He wanted to believe that his reaction wasn’t something that could be called a flinch, and he wanted to believe that his arms hadn’t gone up automatically in defence. He could in fact believe that he had relaxed immediately after the slip-up, but could not really bring himself to believe it had not been a slip-up to begin with. 

He exhaled, not quite meeting either one of the twin’s eyes as he mentally chastised himself. He reminded himself that he was wearing Rose’s uniform, that he was borrowing her name, and there wasn’t anything in Rose’s life worth flinching away from. He couldn’t help but to let some emotion show on his face though. Roxy and Rose had managed to pose a simple gesture like holding his shoulder before. Hell, he rarely flinched away from Dirk to begin with. Why was it…? 

“We understand having to be away from family members.” John’s voice was different, thick with hesitation and Dave lifted his eyes back up in time to catch the way he looked over at Jade for approval before pursuing. “Come sit with us for lunch, we can ask you one of the questions on our ultimate twin questionnaire. A lot of thought went into it, I swear.” 

Maybe it was their attempt to sympathise, to put themselves in Dave’s situation, that truly convinced Dave to follow after them, two or three steps behind. It certainly wasn’t the belief that Rose would have agreed that was pushing him to do so. Maybe, he told himself, he should have taken his duty to emulate Rose’s behaviour with a bit more seriousness, yet… Yet, he had some trouble conceiving walking away from this metaphorical hand that was being extended towards him. Even though the Jade-Harley twins thought they were dealing with Rose, he still felt as if they would have been able to understand Dave, the person behind the getup of Rose’s uniform. It was a powerful feeling, one he wouldn’t have considered on the previous night. Maybe it was wishful thinking, maybe it was too preemptive, but he was willing to give it the smallest of chances. 

Dave forgets to memorise the path leading to the cafeteria. Dave nearly stumbles over his words when he lies about already having a lunch. And Dave doesn’t protest or raise any qualms when the twins decide that, as the cafeteria was full, they could sneak out through the fire escape and sit on the metallic stairs to eat their lunches. Such a plan did not seem law abiding, and was not a thing he should have been involved in, not while flying low off the radar. But Dave forgets how to put those words together, and ends up seated on a platform, a few steps below the stair John and Jade occupied as they pulled out nearly identical meals. 

“Your lunch doesn’t include peanuts, does it? It’s John’s mortal enemy, he’ll basically faint at the sight of one,” Jade joked conversationally as Dave got lost in observing the great trees of the school grounds. The leaves hadn’t begun changing colours yet. He wouldn’t be able to capture the colours with his camera this year, but maybe he could secretly snap a few pictures with Rose’s cell phone? 

“Rose?” 

He didn’t bother making the distinction of who it was calling the word to pull him out of his reverie. Instead he closed his eyes, breathed out through his nose, and convinced himself to answer to the name. 

“Yeah. Peanut-free zone. I’m actually thinking I’ll eat a bit later, not quite hungry yet.” 

Jade ended up handing him a container holding perfect apple slices that tasted as if they’d been coated in a lemon solution to fight off any browning of the apple. No judgement seemed to be passed on Dave’s lack of a lunch, despite his earlier claim. And maybe the taste of the apple slices, alongside the twins’ sudden reserve to pass commentary on Dave and on his, he was sure, annoying habits, softened him enough to help him react perfectly calmly when John does in fact launch himself in a twin testing question. 

“So! Question one! We’ll only ask one question a day, so you can so take your sweet time to make sure you give a satisfactory answer,” he explained elatedly, not at all put off by the chill brought upon the sudden gusts of wind. 

Dave self consciously tugs at his school skirt, not wanting it to be blown up with the rising wind. He belatedly thanks whatever force has directed him to take a seat on a lower level from the twins. It was easy to forget about his feminine apparel and, accessorily to that, to forget to be careful about what his clothes were hiding. 

“Or, you know, answer on the spot for the full honesty version!” Jade corrected, smiling too as her hair whipped wildly around her face. 

They had warm, expressive visages, Dave realised. Not for the first time, he thought of the security of his shades, of hiding at least part of his face. He thought of finally going home in a few hours and being able to bury his face into Rose’s pillows and forgetting about the strange sensations creeping up his spine. Maybe it was the height, maybe it was the cold bite of the day’s wind, maybe it was these twins that almost seemed straight out of twilight zone. But he wanted to be alone, suddenly. He still nodded in response to the twins’ directly contradictory requests. 

“So the first question. We agreed on the first question, right? Right. The first question totally weeds out people who think the twin experience is what’s portrayed on screen from people who know what actually goes down.” 

“Spoon-feed her the right answer while you’re at it, Jade.” 

“And there is no wrong answer, as my dearest brother just specified.” 

“Great. I wouldn’t suppose there’d be any wrong answers to a question you can’t seem to properly ask,” Dave answered, putting his chin down on his hand, as he tried to be subtle about wrapping his free arm around his waist in an effort to preserve some body warmth. 

John inhaled, and Dave caught the way Jade brought her hand over his shoulder, as if discouraging him from getting annoyed with their guest. Dave tries not to think of the way he’d screwed up earlier, flinching away from John’s touch, but somehow still manages to bring it to the forefront of his mind with a promise to analyse what had gone through his mind when he’d seen the boy move towards him later. 

“Alright,” the word is squeezed out from John’s teeth and Dave takes a particular interest in the way the sun’s rays catch on his braces. “You and your twin, what did you say her name was?” 

“His name’s Dave.” 

“Dave!” Dave whips his head towards Jade at that, his face filling with colour both with the chill of the wind and the knowledge that he hadn’t managed to keep himself from reacting as if it were his name she’d exclaimed. “Fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, just like us!” 

“Or he’s still just trying to rip off our life story.” 

“We’re pretty much identical,” Dave explained with the sort of shrug that didn’t invite the other two to intervene with a scientific argument, though he’d seen the way John had opened his mouth as if to argue with him anyway. 

“John,” Jade hissed, elbowing his waist not all too subtly, “Probably ask the question before Rose turns into a walking popsicle!” 

Dave openly crossed his arms over his chest then, pointedly glaring at the girl for even noticing his discomfort. The first whispers of autumn were barely there at all, and he was already pressing his teeth together to avoid any chattering. His thighs felt the coldest, maybe he should have rebelled against authority after all and adorned those school tights. 

“Before Rose gets arrested while being a walking popsicle, more like. There’s no way that blocking the fire escape is something anyone would stand up for if we get caught.”

It almost seemed as if John hadn’t heard Dave’s moody intervention as he cleared his throat, readying himself to ask the question. “So, you and Dave, do you ever communicate using secret twin language?” 

Dave stopped and stared. And, suddenly, burst into a laughter no one would have attributed to Rose, but then again, no one would have attributed to him either. His hands were pressed to his sides now less so in an effort to preserve his warmth, but rather in an effort to calm the laughter that was shaking his frame. “What? You spent all morning coming up with questions, you said… And you come up with this? This is the lamest question I have ever heard.” 

Jade joined in with the laughter, all open throated and good natured in her movement. Dave lost the pace in his own laughter then, watching her with the sort of fondness he would not have asked for. Rose liked to cover her mouth and to duck her head when she laughed. He knew he hadn’t been faithful to that, but in comparison to Jade’s laughter, it was obvious he could have been much farther off. Even though she’d been halfway through chewing the bite of food she'd had in her mouth, she’d thrown her head back immediately, hands not anywhere near her mouth and instead over her stomach. It was… Something that looked to be a lot more expressive on a genuine level than he was used to. 

John, however, had not squeaked out a single sound of laughter. He was looking away from them, towards the scenery, in a way that didn’t convince Dave that it was anything other than dejected. His cheeks too had gained in colour, but Dave could settle on giving him a break about it and blaming it on the chill that was settling despite the height of the sun in the sky. He noticed, as he looked at him, that whereas Jade’s teeth seemed to be orthodontically perfect behind the braces, John’s teeth were noticeably forward, not disappearing completely when he had his mouth shut. He wondered if he’d been wearing braces for a lesser amount of time, or if his teeth had simply been harder to fix to begin with. 

“It was supposed to be lame, that was the point of it…” 

The way he mumbled the words made them hard to grasp, especially when they were drowned out by his twin’s incessant laughter. It couldn’t have been any more obvious for Dave that this question, the first question, was one John had come up with. 

“No, no. I get it. Only real twins would see it as lame, right? A faker totally would have come up with some shitty story to cover their shitty ass. Because of like bad movies and bad television, I’m sure.” 

He took a breath, relieved that Jade had been too preoccupied with calming her laughter, and John too offended to pay his words too much attention. He was letting his own speech patterns bleed through his words again; there was no doubt about that. He sure was looking forward to going back to classes. He looked off to the side for a second, imitating John’s current outlook. He hated speaking up at home, always feeling miffed and worried about saying the right thing around Dirk. This wasn’t proving to be much different, he was just as miffed and as worried when speaking up, in fear of not saying the right thing in his efforts to pass as Rose. 

“Yeah, yeah… I’m heading inside.” 

John got up, sulkily so. There was a shadow of a thought in the back of Dave’s mind. He could let the guy walk away, let him exit the scene with all of the bitterness he was displaying, and watch as he never returned to speak to him again. And Jade would follow suit as well; the two of them were obvious in their combined package deal setup. Instead, he takes the easy route and springs up to his feet, eager to end the chance of him being chastised for sitting in the fire escape, eager to cross the two last classes of the day off his list, and eager to get home to put those stupid fuzzy socks back on, and to hopefully catch Rose on pesterchum. 

Jade stood up too, looking a bit ticked by John’s sudden change of mood, but mostly calm as she accepted the container, emptied of its apple slices, as Dave hands it back over. 

“Ugh, I didn’t invite everyone to head back inside with me too!” John complained, though he held the door for the both of them as they entered back inside. 

Dave stopped next to John, Jade already having stepped inside. There was something that was refusing to be affronted in the way that John stared back at him. He had a piercing gaze, Dave realised, and not only in reason of the icy blues of his eyes. It was something else, something entirely perceptive that he should have been moving away from. In that moment alone, John Harley-Egbert looked like someone that could have figured Dave Strider out. And Dave, definitely should have been running away from that, should have preserved Rose’s secret at all costs. Yet, there had never been anything quite as enticing as the possibility of being figured out, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. 

He only breathed again once they were inside and the door had been shut behind them. 

He put a hand over his brow bone once they were back inside the cafeteria, shielding his eyes from the fluorescent lighting of the room, harsh on his sight with the sudden contrast. Made sure to drop the hand, however, as soon as Jade turned back towards him. 

“So? What was your answer to the lame question? I’m sorry, I sort of missed it.” She chuckled a bit, but the way John glanced over at him made it pretty obvious he still wasn’t going to smile about the laughing fit they had shared just earlier. 

“Well, actually…” His eyes sought out some shape of time telling in the vast room, and only then looked for empty tables. The clock indicated that he still had about a quarter of an hour before his next class, but the busy tables indicated that students weren’t ones to be ready and in class exceptionally early into their lunch break. “My answer could potentially be ‘yes’.” 

John finally seemed to perk up at that. “Really?” 

They paused, forming a three person circle randomly on the cafeteria floor, neither one of the twins watching out for potential free seats, but, and this Dave could easily tell, many students turning to observe the twins instead. Again, Dave was reminded that speaking to these two might have been the stupidest move he could have made in his attempts to respect Rose’s plan for him. John and Jade were an honest spotlight, and Dave could only hope he disappeared next to this spotlight, rather than being brought into the light because of it. 

“Well, I’m not positive I could qualify it as a secret language, but…” His words slowed as he struggled with taking Rose’s place; it was especially hard to be careful about it when telling anecdotes that included him as a person. It was hard to remember he was now the third person, not the first person of his speech. “But, I’m pretty good in French, and I’ve taught Dave a bit.” 

“Yes, we know,” John interjected, sounding exceedingly exasperated suddenly. 

Jade laughed, again, not moving to cover her mouth as she did so. It was a confident sort of laugh, Dave realised, not that he’d ever thought of his sister as anything that wasn’t confident. 

“Sorry, Rose. I think his mind is still reeling as to how you beat us and won the French award last year.” 

Dave didn’t know Rose had, but he could tell, even if Jade had laughed, that she was more on John’s side than she was on Rose’s. 

“It’s pretty obvious, I think. They just eliminated all the native speakers from the running.” 

Dave couldn’t know. He did know that, as far as he was concerned, Rose sounded as if she could have passed as a native speaker, but he didn’t know much more than the francophone films they’d watched together in the past. He kept himself from rudely asking them where they were from, but mostly because he didn’t want to presume that Rose wouldn’t know that information already. 

“Perhaps. I dropped French, anyway,” he answered, actually hoping that the confession would bring the pair some reassurance. The French award could be all theirs, though he was guessing all and every award Rose had won in the past were now up for grabs now that he’d taken her place. 

“I know,” John replied blandly. “Do you make a habit of dropping everything you’re good at doing?” 

Dave was at a loss for a moment only. He’d never felt particularly loved or important in the past, but… He hadn’t either had anyone speak to him with such clear distaste before. He was surprised by the way it stung. He still reasoned it. They had been in orchestra together, apparently. Rose was a killer violinist, that he knew. Maybe he was simply bitter Rose had let the orchestra down? 

He was Rose, he reminded himself. No one was talking to him, Dave, as if he should have been ashamed of his actions. He didn’t have to preoccupy himself with the tone the student he’d just met today took when speaking to him. He didn’t even know he was speaking to him, to Dave. He still focused his eyes on Jade rather than on John to wrap up his answer however. 

“Regardless, that’s how we secretly communicate in front of the parents, in French. Well, in any case, that’s how we annoy the parents.” 

John began walking away and, without asking him just where he was heading, Jade fell into stride with him, and Dave meekly kept up, a look over his shoulder confirming that they were probably heading towards their class together. They could part ways once they reached the staircase, he was fairly certain this way was the way towards it, there was nothing strange about him walking with them, after all, they’d been in the middle of a conversation, even if John had felt it pertinent and fair to just turn away randomly. 

“That’s pretty much the opposite of John and me. We can get away with speaking in French anywhere but at home.” 

“So I must have passed question one of the test, right?” 

The staircase was coming into view. Dave tugged his skirt further down again, knowing he would be going up one floor soon, and didn’t particularly want to flash anyone on his way up. As he climbed the first step, the twins paused and he did as well, waiting for their answer expectantly. 

“Sure. We’ll administrate question two come tomorrow.” John actually smiled with the words, surprising Dave as he did so. Maybe he truly had been satisfied with his answer? Maybe, Dave seemed relatable to him already. Or, Rose did… 

Either way, this shouldn’t have been a good thing. John was making it sound as if their questionnaire was a convenient excuse to engage with and to speak to him on a daily basis. Was he allowed to make friends…? 

Was it ridiculous that he was seriously considering asking Rose as much in that exact wording? 

“Cool. Try making question two a little less lame.” 

“No way! The whole theme of our twin survey is lameness, didn’t you know? Spoiler alert, tomorrow, John will ask you if you communicate telepathically with Dave!” 

He tried to laugh along with Jade. Even John had smiled at her answer, but it felt odd in a destabilising way to hear his name spoken by Jade so casually. It was enough to keep him from forming an actual answer and he felt a bit helpless as she waved him goodbye and the pair walked away, away from the staircase and towards their classroom probably, Jade putting her arm around John’s shoulders as they walked away and moving closer to him to speak, as if sharing a secret. Dave convinced himself that he hadn’t strained his neck to catch sight of them as they moved away, and tugged at his skirt again, making his way up the stairs. 

He did vehemently wish that he could have communicated telepathically with Rose. He could have asked her about everything he needed help with. He could have asked her how she was doing. He could have asked her if she believed that, maybe, had they been raised in the same house, they could have been closer. 

He missed Rose. Listening in class only alleviated that feeling somewhat. The novelty of sitting at a school desk, amongst so many other teenagers like himself, just like every teenaged character he’d ever seen in works of fiction, was still bright and a bit terrifying. The idea that he’d be doing this, going through all of this, weighed down with the impossibility to communicate with Rose most of the time, felt more terrifying though. 

His last class of the day soothed him somewhat though. He hadn’t mentioned anything about it to Rose, but he’d appreciated it when he had observed his schedule of classes for the year and had found the art class amongst the others. Not that Rose wasn’t artistic, not when he considered her creative writing and her violin playing. But, from his understanding, art classes had a lot more to do with visual arts. That was his cup of tea, even if he never spoke seriously of it, and clearly Rose understood that about him, or else the class wouldn’t have been in his schedule. Or so, that’s what he’d told himself about it. 

He was soothed, but quite less so once he’d arrived in the classroom. The layout seemed to be larger tables, meant for four students. He could get that, he could understand the whole spirit of collaboration it was supposed to bring out. He wasn’t as excited about the two chatty, dark skinned, pale eyed students who took up half of the table closest to the teacher’s desk. 

An hour away from them had helped the guilt spread through his chest and down to his stomach. It was his first day. It was only his first day outside of Rose’s home and inside of her school, a place which clearly meant a lot to her. And he hadn’t been doing a good job of things. He’d gotten caught up with his own feelings. He was always caught up with his own feelings; his own feelings made up most of his life already. Surely he could make abstraction of those for a year of his life. 

He made a point of not looking in their direction and of seating himself in the table closest to the classroom door. 

Similarly to the other classes of his day, no concrete work was done, but rather plans were set out, projects for the year explained. At least, ideas that bloomed in his mind were enough to distract himself from further berating or from concentrating on the notes John and Jade slid back and forth. No one around him had a bond like that. Or maybe, he wasn’t noticing people enough. Maybe, he wouldn’t have noticed them had they just been friends rather than twins. 

Needless to say, he rushed out as soon as the bell rung. He raced down the massive oak staircase, coming close to tripping a number of times. And before he could turn back or think back on any of the day’s events, of any of the thoughts the day had brought forth, he was walking out of school, stepping onto the lawn rather than the prepared sidewalk, and making his way towards the sleek and dark car. It was parked in the same spot where he had been dropped off that morning and when he forces his mind to believe it, he can almost make it seem as if it had been there that morning when he’d turned back. Maybe, he’d turned back and it had still been there and he’d walked back as he was doing now, and everything in between could be erased. Thoughts of making friends could be tossed into the trash where they belonged. 

He almost slipped up and went to open the front door. Hesitating for a moment, he simply put a hand up to acknowledge Roxy and then turned to open the door Rose preferred and slipped into the backseat. 

“I’m back,” he declared, liking the idea of ignoring the day’s events and instead imagining that he had spent a few minutes outside of the car rather than a few hours. 

“Good job, honey.” 

Their eyes connected in the rearview mirror and by the way the thin lines of her eyebrows curved, he could tell she was smiling. His eyes moved down to her profile rather than the reflection and he found that smile to be a tight lipped one. 

“No homework yet,” he declared, not sure if that sort of information was relevant or not.

The car took off and his eyes landed on the car radio instead. Why was the car so silent? He would have considered asking for it to be turned on, but could not be quite sure if the silence was one of Rose’s demands or rather one of Roxy’s preferences. However, he did idly wonder what was new and popular on those radio stations Dirk loved to put on. He wondered how Dirk was. 

Soon, the house came into view and, with some surprise, Dave realised the relief he thought would hit him once he could settle back into Rose’s home and into the comfort of her bedroom did not crash into him. For how much he’d been looking forward to being away from school, he felt… Quite empty. He pressed his lips together. He wanted to go home. It was too late to go back now though, or, maybe too early if he looked at it from a different angle. The amount of time he had to spend as Rose just seemed impossible for the time being. He could only hope that the learning curve would be steep. 

“I’ll be home in a few hours. Make sure to grab yourself a snack, and call me if you need anything.” 

Dave nodded and stayed very still when she turned in her seat and reached towards him to cup his cheek affectionately. He’d almost forgotten that his mother seemed to only come home from work around half past six and that school ended much earlier than that. Again, he had to wonder why Rose wasn’t at all encouraged to find her way back home all by herself. Hopefully, he’d be able to change that in coming weeks. 

“I’ll see you tonight, mom.” The word on his tongue felt wrong, but he ignored it as best as he could. 

And as he unlocked the door to the home that really wasn’t his own, waved goodbye to the mother who really shouldn’t have been so present in his life, he thought back again to how he’d wanted to cower away from that boy at school when he’d reached out towards him, and how he’d been able to sit still as Roxy had reached out towards him now. What conclusion was he supposed to pull? 

Though he hadn’t considered it earlier, he was happy to be home alone and happy that his mother still had more work to get done. For how much he wanted Rose to be online, he did drag his feet upstairs, mostly out of fear that she would be missing in action once more. 

For how much he wanted to talk to her, he took the time to take off Rose’s fashionable shoes, and Rose’s embarrassing schoolgirl knee high socks and to instead put the fuzzy socks back on before booting up the computer. And for how badly he wanted to check if she was online yet, he stared at the desktop for a full minute before opening up the pesterchum application. 

They’d exchanged passwords before parting ways, for the sake of convenience. He’d agreed to Rose communicating with Dirk rather than him doing it. He was busy pretending to be Rose, he didn’t want to also pretend to be overseas. But it was still odd to be messaged by his beloved childhood chumhandle. 

**\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]  at 3:41 -- **

TG: Good job on your first day.  
TT: yeah i didnt actually go  
TG: I beg your pardon?  
TT: well ya know  
TT: when i got on this morning  
TT: you were nowhere to be seen  
TT: i didnt have my guardian angel around so i couldnt go through with it  
TT: ok stop being quiet  
TT: im just being a lil shit  
TT: i did actually go  
TT: nothing happened though  
TT: dont even have a single piece of work to do  
TT: we didnt even do work either  
TT: what a boring nightmare am i right  
TG: I can tell you were bored as you are shooting these messages quicker than ever. Tell me, Dave, was it really necessary to claim that I was being quiet when it hadn’t yet been twenty seconds since I’d sent my last message?  
TT: dont be a know it all thats my job now  
TT: how are you anyway  
TT: its not like you give me satisfactory updates  
TG: Maybe I’m hiding my cards because I’m preparing a grandiose presentation for you, complete with photo documentation.  
TT: have you met that girl yet?  
TG: Tell me how your day was.  
TT: already told ya though  
TT: it was to die for  
TT: but because i was so bored i was approaching death  
TG: First days are typically like that. My advice to you is to use the agenda you were given and to always make sure you are up to date with the work you should be doing.  
TT: yes sir  
TT: but uh 

Dave sighed. He’d had so many questions lined up for Rose, but now… The only one that truly stuck out in his mind was the one about friends. He strained himself to dress a list addressing issues that he didn’t care as much about. 

TG: Yes?  
TT: when do i get to take off the uniform  
TT: like when is your pj changing happening on school days  
TG: You may change into sleepwear at any given time.  
TT: cool thanks sis  
TT: how about like  
TT: oh right  
TT: why is mom driving you around  
TT: is that absolutely necessary  
TG: We have a close relationship.  
TT: ok sure  
TT: also

Also, he had to ask. He had to ask because, maybe, the answer would be a different one from what he was expecting. 

TT: so friends  
TG: Do not worry about that.  
TT: like yeah i know you said there arent any of your friends in the classes im taking  
TT: but like what if some peeps befriend me  
TG: Just focus on your studies, I’m sure that won’t be a problem. 

His replies progressively slowed down after that. He couldn’t really see how that had meant to imply anything other than the idea that Dave was hard to befriend. He wasn’t either very happy with the ideas his mind was pushing on him now. Maybe Rose had picked classes with a specific intent in mind, but no one had called out to her double in the hallways, or in the cafeteria, or at any point in the day. 

It hadn’t really seemed as if Rose had friends either. 

He didn’t want to remind Rose that this was his first time with an opportunity to make friends outside of the internet community. 

He means to bring up the fact that there are twins in his class, and to press on why she hadn’t shared the information on Dave with anyone yet. He figures that maybe that could wait longer though, it had just been one day so far and he still had time to bring these issues up with her. 

Mostly, he tries to get her to speak about her experience in Haiti. He doesn’t get any clear answers. 

He changes into pyjamas. And the week goes on in very much the same fashion. He wakes too early on a daily basis and fights with his choices in uniform come every morning. He comes home and has strained conversations with Rose over pesterchum and keeps the questions he’s answering at school for her a secret. 

He doesn’t tell her that on Tuesday the question John asks him is if he’s ever swapped places with his twin before. He doesn’t mention that it takes him a very long time to answer the question. 

He doesn’t tell her about the questions Jade asks him on Wednesday and Thursday either. And as his first Friday of school progresses and the twins don’t run up to him to catch up with him, not even over the lunch period, Dave believes that just, maybe, there would be no question to hide from his twin any longer. 

The last period of the day had been art again. Though he did chat with the twins in homeroom, and sometimes had some fruit from their packed lunches over the lunch break, he never did approach them in their art class, and still occupied the farthest seat he could find. So, he’s a bit surprised when John takes the seat next to him, and even more so surprised when he looks around and realises that other students had already left the classroom. He’d heard the bell, had heard the teacher wish them a good weekend, but he’d just wanted to take a few more seconds to change some things to his sketch. Apparently, that had dragged on for a bit too long. 

He shuts his sketchpad just as John points it out. “So, are you just good at everything?” 

Dave grimaces. He didn’t really like to apply himself when drawing, not when other people could see the result, anyway. 

“Probably just means I’m going to end up dropping it though, right?” 

He smirks, but John seems distracted, simply hums in reply to Dave’s jab. He puts his things into Rose’s expensive looking bag, sets the bag down onto the table, but still, John is unresponsive. 

“So. Where’s Jade?” 

“Oh.” He scratches his scalp, seeming a bit sheepish at being caught with his head in the clouds. “That’s right, she had to meet with a teacher. I thought I’d hang back and ask you your daily twin question.” 

Dave keeps himself from asking about Jade’s meeting and simply straightens up. “Alright, I see I still haven’t managed to prove my twin status. So be it.” 

Again, there is no positive reaction out of John. But when Dave clears his throat, he seems to panic and to launch into a long explanation of the question. 

“So, when we were in the sixth grade… Like Jade and me, not you and me, that’s what I meant when I said we. Well, anyway, we had a biology type of class and we talked about symbiotic relationships.” Dave nodded along, though it didn’t seem as if John was looking at him at all. “And there were three types. One, where both organisms in the relationship could benefit from the relationship. So like, a shark and one of those cleaning fish things. ‘Cause the shark gets cleaned up and the fish gets nutrition, and that’s mutualistic as far as symbiosis goes and I guess that’s great.” 

Dave listened on, doing his best to follow the train of thought, but not quite knowing which stop they were heading towards. 

“And then there’s parasitism, where… I guess that’s pretty self-explanatory. One organism benefits, but the other is having a lousy time. Like, when your dog gets fleas, or if you get a tapeworm. And then lastly, there’s commensalism, where one party benefits, but the other couldn’t care less. Like those orchids that grow from tree trunks. Doesn’t change anything for the tree, but the orchid wouldn’t be alive without it.” 

“And you remember this all from your sixth grade?” 

When Dave smiles this time, John does actually look at him and smiles back. 

“Yeah, I do. I don’t know, it really marked me. And I’ve always sort of looked at people and wondered what kind of relationship they would have if I had to evaluate it symbiotically.” 

“I bet that’s not a very common trait,” Dave replies, amused, and only beginning to dread John’s eventual question. “If the question is if I do this too, well, I don’t.” 

“No… I wanted to know. If you had to evaluate your relationship with your twin, which one would it be?” 

That seemed… Deeply personal; Dave decided. Mostly though, it was something he really wished he didn’t have to think of. And so he doesn’t, not for some time. 

“I’m just asking,” John begins to mumble once the silence becomes too heavy, “because I know I’m supposed to say mutualism. That’s the best one. But I’m scared it’s not…” When Dave looks at him, it almost feels as if he is looking at him for the very first time. “‘Cause, I know I’m benefiting. But, I do sort of think that Jade and me, it’s at best commensalism, or at worst parasitism.” 

Dave licks his lips, puts his bag down onto his lap rather than on the table and breathes out deeply and loudly before answering. 

“I couldn’t have said it better.” 

It’s all he has to say to convey his feelings. 

It’s all he has to say to make a deeply personal confession that had nothing to do with the answer Rose would have given. Rose, Dave knows, should have given a completely opposite reply. She was, at best, unaffected by Dave’s benefit, or at worst inconvenienced by it, and there was no place in Dave’s life to consider the ‘best option’ that was the one in which Rose got as much out of the relationship as he did. 

There’s an urge to cover John’s hand with his, even though he resists it. For how inseparable and upbeat the pair of him and his sister made, Dave could tell there had been no pretence in his explanations. Dave could see himself in John and… And, it was bound to cause him trouble in the end.


	3. Guilty vs. Guiltless

**[Winter 2011:](https://salviapalth.bandcamp.com/track/i-was-all-over-her) ** Guilty vs. Guiltless

 

Dave’s chest tightened as the webpage loaded, the last empty space finally filled, supposedly by his literature teacher who must have preferred to input grades on late Sunday mornings rather than on the typical school-day. For a few moments his gaze was lost, not able to locate the new midterm grade amongst all of the others he’d received over the course of the week. Upon finding it on the page, he held his breath, blinked twice, and then exhaled slowly. He felt the impulse to pester Rose, but fought it down. Jade had casually told him that John hadn’t fared too well in his science midterm, actually his favorite class, to which John only added that the only thing he needed to ace was the final. 

Which easily translated the fear Dave had felt towards his midterms to a crushing terror towards the end of term exams. He only needed to apply John’s logic: the only exam he needed to fail was the final. He breathed a sigh of relief now nonetheless, his current results could only mean that he had all the right tools to succeed later as well. Regardless, he wouldn’t contact Rose as they didn’t guarantee a good end of term score. His hands were still drawn to the keyboard with a slow-burning desire to alert the Harley-Egbert twins of his last grade. Though they had tried, a good number of times, to get his chumhandle or his phone number, he’d always managed to dismiss it through a few ill-timed jokes. He had yet to truly try to get Rose’s approval for befriending the pair, and as such kept them off both Rose’s phone and pesterchum account. 

That only left one person to confide in. He straightened out the dress he, despite the couple of months he’d now been doing this for, had had a hard time struggling into. It was a lilac one with a turtleneck which, he could guess, would have truly brought out the beauty of Rose’s eyes, but instead had to settle with Dave’s current artificial browns. It was presentable enough for Sunday night which he knew meant that, as long as Dirk refused to participate in what had used to be their traditional weekly familial get-together, would be a night out in some high-end restaurant. Especially now that they had cause to celebrate. He wondered idly if Rose’s grades were usually celebrated, or if she kept that information under lock until the end of the semester, or even year, in the same fear that Dave had of messing up later on. He didn’t even care to check with Rose about protocole, his mother had had nothing but positive words all throughout his start of the tenth grade and, yes, though he’d thought of Rose, Jade and John first, he still yearned to share the good news with his mother. 

He raced down the curve of the right set of stairs of the mansion-styled staircase, casually calling out for his mother and trusting the acoustics of the house to carry his message: “Mom! My last grade is in!” 

As he approached the end of his trek down the stairs, he jumped with the intention of skipping the last five steps and landing on the ground floor. It ended poorly as he noticed the person who’d stopped in front of the staircase once they’d heard the call, crossing their arms over their chest. Surprised, Dave only managed to skip three of the steps and barely managed to keep his footing, thus narrowly avoiding stumbling forward and landing straight onto his face. 

Dirk Strider looked younger than he usually did. Maybe it was the choice in attire, an obvious callback to the many photographs Dave had seen of his parents in their teenaged years. In fact, the denim jacket and Chuck Taylors he’d adorned seemed worn enough to actually be items he’d kept from the 1980s. Maybe it was the obviousness of his full head of hair, as he’d exceptionally forgone any of his hats from his baseball cap collection. Though he was wearing his infamous fingerless leather gloves, his extravagant shades had been settled over his head rather than over his nose, giving Dave a rare chance to see the expressive nature of his shockingly amber coloured eyes. 

His chest tightened, not at all in the same way it had with the anticipation of receiving a new grade, but rather with an aching feeling that suspiciously felt like longing. This had been the very first time he’d seen Dirk since that fated day at the airport, the family splitting up in what had ended up being quite final. Now that he was before him, he wasn’t quite sure how to react, especially given the fact that they had been locked in a staring contest for an indefinite amount of time. 

He opened his mouth to greet him, to find some snarky commentary, some ruthless remark that would truly be Rose, but instead nothing came up, his lungs feeling too full and his throat too tight. Dirk had titled his head slightly, his expression unmistakable. An expression of certain recognition. Dave’s vision blackened at the edges, panic his gut reaction to the turn of events. 

“So, how’d you do?” Dirk asked steadily, not a syllable giving away his reaction to Dave’s presence. 

‘The exam’, Dave’s mind supplied weakly over the chant of being found out by his guardian. Dirk had to know it was him. He’d looked at him as if he’d known it was Dave. He had to know… 

“Perfect. Perfect grade,” he finally answered, not able to put any energy behind the words. 

His reaction didn’t manage to bring any changes in Dirk’s stance. If anything, the look he wore was extremely familiar, the same he would sport whenever Dave told him about any of his new interests. In the past, he might have qualified it as mocking, but he currently couldn’t think of a more fitting word than ‘proud’. 

If he had truly figured Dave out, he couldn’t feel more ashamed of the fact that he could wear something close to pride for a son that had totally played him for a fool and had more or less run away from home. 

“That’s impressive, kid.” 

Dave firmly looked down with what must have been a true air of horror. If he’d never particularly liked being called ‘kid’, he had noticed it was used by Dirk exclusively for him. Rose was called, at the closest of times ‘kiddo’, but never ‘kid’. 

He hopped over the last two remaining stairs and as he did, Dirk’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder. Clenching his jaw, Dave managed not to flinch away from the touch, but knew that he’d already lost the battle in convincing his guardian that he was indeed Rose. 

“I’m proud of you.” 

His ears rang with the praise, not yet sure the man was playing a mind game with him, torturing him for what he’d pulled, or if he was speaking honestly. He eventually met his eyes when his touch did not immediately leave his body. The look they exchanged was intense at best, and not in the same way Rose’s gaze held intensity. 

Again, he tried to find words, but the same feeling clogged his lungs and airway. Instead of asking how he’d been, why he was here so early in the day, if he would ever come back for their weekly gathering, Dave promptly turned and raced back to Rose’s bedroom without another word. 

He made short work of securing the door closed behind him and rolling the computer chair over in a messy attempt of barring the door from all entry. He tried to catch his breath, but to no avail, he barely felt as if he was breathing at all. 

“Ok. Calm down. It’s not as if he straight up admitted to knowing it was you. Maybe he has a weird relationship with Rose. That’s all it was. That’s probably all it was. And Rose is weird all by herself anyway, so it wouldn’t be super freaky if she ran out of a conversation like that, right? Right.” 

He kept up a steady stream of hectic, only attempting to be comforting, words, as he booted up his pesterchum and pressed the video-call button without hesitation. 

He spared a thought or two as the client ran as to what sort of work Rose might be doing at this time of the day, a Sunday, out on a mission to make a difference in the world. Probably nothing that entailed talking her twin off the edge and yet… He really, really, really needed her reassurance in that moment. He glanced manically at the bedroom door as the ringing continued, half expecting both his parents to break the door down in order to begin shouting their lungs out at him. 

What would they say? He thinks he probably would have been quite ashamed if he’d simply been caught wearing a dress without any explanation, but this? Embodying his sister? For weeks on end? Unapologetically posing as her and tricking every person he met? He was going to hell. It didn’t even matter that he didn’t believe in hell in the first place, he would believe that a special place in the afterlife would be created just for his sake, just to punish him. 

As soon as the video connected he launched into frenzied words. 

“You have got to come back home. Like right now, right right now. I don’t care what it takes, I’ll pay for your flight ticket, I’ve got savings. I don’t care. You need to come back right now. You’re killing me, I’m dying out here. Please, please come home.” 

He only stopped once he could no longer muster any other words, playing the ones he’d even uttered over in his head revealed just how pathetic his plea had been in the first place. He blinked the tears away, yet again glancing at the door, and exhaling shakily as he tried to concentrate on the image of Rose. The video showed that she was outside, probably using Dave’s phone to answer the call. Everything seemed sunny around her, illuminated, and by the minimal tank top she was wearing, it seemed the temperature must have been just as warm as that strong sunlight might indicate. Rose herself though seemed mostly unchanged, her hair had grown a little longer, her eyes were back to the mystical purple he’d grown up with, but she still seemed herself. Dave, in contrast, was clearly falling apart. 

“Dave? I didn’t catch most of that… What’s wrong? Is it school? Don’t worry about that, I’ll fix it once I get home, you don’t have to put so much pressure on yourself.” 

She too was speaking in hushed tones, but Dave was unsure if it was to avoid their mother hearing the total fallout and meltdown or if she too was trying not to disrupt surrounding people on her end of the line. 

The softness of the words did nothing to change Dave’s reaction though. Her talk of putting too much pressure on himself was deeply reminiscent of their mother telling Dave of how much pressure Rose put on herself, thoughts that were expressed by Jade and John as well, and that on a near daily basis. Both thinking of Rose’s supposed day-to-day problems and of the twins he theoretically must have been banned from befriending, only managed to pile onto his guilt and distress. The edges of his vision darkened even more so as he tried to find the right words to bring Rose home. 

“No, Rose. Bro knows. He one hundred percent knows. He’s going to kill me. If not now, then later. He’s going to kick my ass until I’m dead. Rose, don’t do this to me.” 

“What? He knows? Did you tell him? How could he know?” 

She looked a bit more concerned, but only slightly so, glancing off to the side probably towards someone, as if she had somewhere else to be and Dave was holding her up. 

“No, course not. But… He’s here. In the house. Right now. He looked at me and… Rose, he knows. Just trust me, he called me ‘kid’ and everything.” 

The concern slowly left her features and Dave felt as if he was effectively drowning as he too looked off screen towards the bedroom door. Rose wasn’t going to believe him. Rose was going to leave him there to handle the charade all by himself. 

She sighed longly. 

“So, he didn’t say anything? Dave, calm down. He doesn’t know, you look perfect. And, this may be a shock to you, but I do happen to be his kid as well. You’re just feeling stressed out. Take the day to relax and stop worrying about this.” 

“Of course I’m stressed out, are you kidding me?” he breathed in through his nose, mildly aware that he hadn’t shared with Rose any of these distressed feelings in the past months, and even more distantly so, aware that he hadn’t quite felt this strongly up until crossing paths with his guardian. “It’s too much stress for me. Usually, my life is zero stress. I don’t want to do this anymore, alright? I want out!” 

Rose seemed bewildered and, in the small window in the corner of the screen, he recognised the very same expression on his face as well. Maybe he’d gotten a bit too good at impersonating his twin, as they seemed to be a mirror image of one another in that moment. She hadn’t expected the outburst and, frankly, neither had he. In fact, thinking of the ‘out’ left him strangely melancholic as he thought of school, Jade, John, the fire escape route where they shared most of their lunches, his mother, long car rides with her where no words were exchanged at all… Really, ‘out’ didn’t seem all that exciting, unless he was thinking of Dirk and the way he had looked at him, as if he’d known everything about their plan, to the very last detail, and had no qualms or feelings about it. 

“I’m stuck here too, alright? So just take a deep breath. You’ve been doing great so far. It’ll be over before you know it. But right now, I need to go, alright, Dave? Don’t freak out on me. You can do this.” 

Dave fought with himself to nod his head, his resolve weakened by the surprisingly biting edge to Rose’s tone. He barely picked up on Rose’s soft ‘I’m sorry’ as she hung up. He had had no problem, however, picking up on the misery that had coloured her words as she had compared Dave’s situation to hers. He pressed his fists to his eyes, taking the deep breaths Rose had recommended. She must have been right. He was halfway through the semester after all and nothing terrible had happened. His current average was comparable to Rose’s preceding reputation and he even felt as if he had friends. Friends he’d managed to make without staying in his bedroom, hidden behind his keyboard. Perhaps, he had to do it hidden under the mask of his sister’s identity, but it was still something new and exciting. 

He turned on the webcam, all the while continuing to take deep breaths. Finally, he kneeled down in front of the desk, only now realising he hadn’t been sitting for his cry for help, and fixed his hair and the headband he’d chosen to wear in the morning, before his impending emotional breakdown, with the help of the screen’s image. He closed his eyes for a moment and, once opened again, pretended his reflection was his sister. 

“You’re fine. It’s just about Dirk, you don’t want to let him down. Forget about it, you can deal with that in like… Half a year. Concentrate your efforts on the mission at hand.” 

Satisfied with his faked air of composure, he stood up and rolled the chair he’d pressed against the door back into its rightful spot. “Take two,” he whispered to himself, as he left the room. 

Take two seemed wildly unsuccessful once he arrived in the salon and took note that Dirk had left, leaving him solely with Roxy, who was leafing through a new issue of her favourite interior design magazine, surely left behind by her long-time best friend. 

He curled his hands into light fists, wondering if Dirk had told her or not. Was she about to forbid him from ever setting foot in her home again? Were they going to send him away? Would he have to go live on the street because of his betrayal? Did she even know in the first place? He straightened his posture, just in case and cleared his throat to gain her attention. 

“Has my father left already? I expected that he would join us for supper.” 

Roxy actually jumped, seeming shocked out of reverie. Though once she seemed to realise her surroundings and her approaching ‘daughter’, she became all smiles. 

“Rose! Dirk told me about your grade. That’s fantastic news! That’s nearly perfect grades across the board, you must be so happy.” 

Dave swallowed thickly, the relief he felt at seeing her genuineness crushing his previous worries. He took a seat, as elegantly as he could, next to his mother. 

“I suppose, though as you said that’s nearly perfect, not perfect.” 

She smiled, in the sort of adoring way Dave had often seen her look at Rose, but something was a little off. It was like looking at a house you often saw, and though all the lights seemed on, at closer look, you noticed at least one room wasn’t lit up as it usually would be. 

“Was everything alright… With my father?” he asked, despite the way his stomach sank when referring to Dirk in such a manner. 

He watched her as she seemed to lose herself in her thoughts and, slowly, it reminded him of watching a house in which all the lights slowly turned off, one by one. 

“I really miss him,” he added as an afterthought. Unintentionally, he’d spoken of his own feelings, with little regard to how Rose would feel in the same given situation. 

“Me too, all the time,” Roxy replied in a tone that was both loving and nostalgic and which Dave would never be able to place. He couldn’t even think of someone who’d ever spoken in that same way, all fondness and regret. It intrigued him, but not enough so to ask any questions about it. 

“Should we invite him back to Sunday dinners then?” he asked instead, innocently enough. 

“He’s always invited, whenever, so is Dave, you know that. It’s just been… It’s hard for him to adjust.” She paused, rolling her eyes, but still did so with an adoring gleam to them, before continuing. “You know how he is, that kid’s his whole world. I think he’s a bit at a loss now that he’s off into the world.” 

“Dave?” he couldn’t help but to ask incredulously. 

“Now, now, there’s no need to be jealous. They have a very special bond, that’s just how it is.” 

“Very special bond?” he asked again, knowing his face had scrunched up with the effort of accepting Roxy’s words. 

“They’re very lucky to have each other,” she replied serenely enough. 

Dave heard the longing however and, yet again, felt as if he were missing a vital piece of the puzzle. Would Rose know why their mother would speak in such a tone? What did it mean? He cast his doubts aside and, instead of contemplating the words she had used, simply put his hand over hers. 

“How about we order in some food for tonight?” he offered, thinking both of Dirk’s usual Sunday bearing of fried food, but also of Rose’s unexplained love for it. 

He did have a hard time falling asleep that night, his mind returning again and again to that concept of ‘special bond’. Perhaps it had been that special bond which had allowed Dirk to identify him with such ease. As he fell asleep, he finally admitted to himself that Rose must have been wrong, that Dirk had most definitely recognised him thanks to that sort of special bond. 

Come morning, his thoughts had turned sour and taken an opposite turn. He’d put on the uniform’s cream coloured sweater and opted for the winter black tights and black sneakers he’d found in the back of Rose’s closet; he wasn’t quite sure they met the criteria of the school’s dress code. The city’s continued snowfall seemed desolating that morning, and all thoughts of being someone who mattered a lot in his father’s eyes had evaporated with the morning dew. 

He felt in a trance as he navigated through his early morning, almost forgetting to say goodbye to Roxy as he left her car for the school doors and replaying his interactions with Dirk the previous day over and over inside of his head. Maybe the reason he hadn’t been around, really, was because he really would have preferred to be out of the whole family’s life. Dave leaving made it easier to live the life he truly wanted.

He more or less shrieked as he felt a hand touch his shoulder, outright jumping out of his chair in the homeroom classroom. He gripped at his chest as John Harley-Egbert took a step back with a face full of regret and as his twin slapped Dave on his back with a good-natured laugh. 

“Sorry about him, he got worried when you weren’t at our usual meeting spot.” 

Dave smiled somewhat gratefully, resettling back into his seat as Jade took her own and John hoisted himself up to sit down on Dave’s desk all the while facing his sister. 

“Are you kidding? The weather’s way too cold for me to function.” To demonstrate, he crossed his arms over his desk and rested his head atop them, somewhat conscious that John’s lap was only a few inches away from his now makeshift tabletop pillow. 

John crossed his arms, frowning at Dave’s lack of posture. “Let it be said that I was only worried because of your tendency to quit. I didn’t want you to quit school, I sort of care about your future.” 

“How generous of you,” Dave replied drily, “I’ve got to tell you that the only thing keeping me from dropping out is the fact that I have to show up every day to answer your dumb twin questions.” 

At that, Jade stopped pulling out her various markers from her backpack to turn towards Dave excitedly, clapping her hands together. 

“Oh! It’s my turn today. I’ve got the question right here…” She pulled a post-it note from her cardigan’s right pocket. “Here it is! Rose Lalonde, who are your favourite twins?” 

“She means like, fictive twins or real-life famous twins or like, you know, anything goes,” John clarified. 

“So you mean Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, right?” Dave offered with a small grin. 

He had the front-row seat to John’s affronted look as he threw his hands up to the sky. 

“Ok, that is it, Jade. There’s no way she’s an actual twin, if the only pair she could think of was the Olsen twins.” 

“I was only pulling your leg, I knew you’d get offended. Let’s be real, my favourite twins are Jade and John Harley-Egbert.”

If possible, John now looked even more affronted. 

“You’re so sweet, Rose,” Jade added distractedly, as she’d already begun scribbling away as they waited for their day of school to start. 

“Yeah, a real charmer,” John grumbled as he dragged his feet away to take his assigned seat behind Jade. 

Dave couldn’t help but to look over his shoulder and to smile at John and was still surprised to see John’s brilliant smile back, obviously in a good mood despite his complaints. 

He allowed himself to rest his head back down and to shut his eyes, putting aside the images in his mind of Dirk’s eyes, of Rose’s busy air and rushed words of dismissal and Roxy’s strange air of nostalgic adoration. He smiled, thinking to himself that attending school and having at least two faces he could arguably call friends felt worlds more homely than both Roxy’s mansion and Dirk’s bachelor pad did. 

He moved through his day, a strange mixture of guilt and shame when he thought of his home situation, but an ecstatic sense of glee at knowing he’d meet up with the twins for his lunch period. Surely enough, they found him at the doorway of his class, Dave, as he tended to do, the last to have left the classroom. 

“Please tell me we’re staying inside to eat,” Dave greeted the pair and their matching grins with little enthusiasm as he noticed their parkas and lunch boxes. 

“You can sit between us, you won’t even notice we’re outside,” Jade tried, none too convincingly. 

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but,” he indicated towards his state of dress, “I didn’t exactly bring a coat or anything.” 

“I have noticed, but I also noticed last year that you have like a fashion lineup amount of coats, so seems to me it was your decision to brave the cold this year.”

He didn’t even attempt glaring at John. He must have been right, Rose always appeared to be fashion conscientious. Dave on the other hand, well, he hadn’t even remembered that coats and jackets were a thing. Personally, he tended to stay inside when the temperature was too low and, on rare occasions where he set out into the world anyway, it was with an objective, often related to photography, that kept him just distracted enough not to think of his lack of winter wear. His lack of jacket today and recently for that matter was his own faux pas and he’d have to assume the consequences. 

“We can just stick together for warmth, shouldn’t be too much of a problem!” Jade decided in an upbeat tone. 

True to her word, Dave found himself squished between Jade and John in one of the steps of the fire escape, rather than a few steps below as he typically preferred. It made sharing Jade’s lunch all that much easier. Even now that he’d been busy filling Rose’s shoes for a good number of months, he still couldn’t bring himself to spend money at the school cafeteria. Luckily, neither of the twins had questioned it, despite Dave’s designer bag and the expensive car that drove him to and from school on a daily basis. If he were being honest with himself, it really did seem as if they enjoyed his company and couldn’t be bothered to bring up a sensitive topic if it were likely to spook Dave away for good. 

He often thought it must have something to do with Rose’s reputation as an academic success and musical prodigy that convinced them to put up with Dave’s mannerisms, mannerisms he knew could never line up with Rose’s. But a weaker, yet persistent, part of him believed it might have just been Dave’s presence of itself which convinced the two to include him in their day-to-day life.

“So, all your grades in?” John asked between two bites. 

Dave looked up from his half of the sandwich, blinking at the extreme luminosity of the snow covered landscape. On most days, he still felt as if the absence of his shades was his biggest downfall. 

“Uh huh. How about you, any other catastrophic grades?” 

Jade laughed as John elbowed him, eyebrows furrowed. 

“Yo, whatever. Jade wasn’t even supposed to tell you about that grade,” he sighed, once again speaking before swallowing his bite of food; Dave tried to find it disgusting but thought it was more endearing than anything else. “And no we haven’t, can you believe that? Our grade from History class isn’t in yet which is offensive given that next week is study week.” 

Dave almost choked on his food. Study week? What the hell was a study week? He tried not to look too disturbed by the turn in conversation as he feigned interest in his shoelaces which had, probably, come untied hours earlier. The silence felt heavy though, even if he was fairly certain that was only the case to his ears.

“But… Why would that be offensive?” Dave dared ask, hoping that he’d be thrown a life ring in the answer. 

John gave him an incredulous look and, if possible, looked even more offended. It brought a small smile to Dave’s lips. Whereas when he’d first met the other student, he’d seemed mostly argumentative and ready to fight when faced with Rose, over time his default expression had turned to taken aback and offended which, Dave knew, was really a cover for how amusing he thought Dave to be. Or anyway, he knew as much on days where his negativity didn’t take too strong a hold of his thought process. 

“Because, Rose,” John enunciated slowly, seeming annoyed, but today, Dave could see the glint of amusement in his eyes. “They expect us to stay home a full week to study before finals week, I won’t know what to study if I don’t know what went wrong on the midterm which, just by the way, we handed in over three weeks ago. They just want us to fail, clearly.” 

“A whole week?” Dave blanched instead of hopping on board of John’s rant. 

Suddenly, Jade’s face was extremely close to his and he backed away in reaction, almost falling backwards. She was studying him with a serious air. “Did you hit your head?” 

“No,” he answered shakily, thinking quick to cover up his momentary lapse of judgement, “It’s just too much time to study, I think so every year. It’s not like I forgot what study week was!” 

His voice rang overly defensive and he crossed his arms over his chest for good measure. 

“Yeah, I remember you saying you didn’t like being stuck at home for that long,” John mused, surprising Dave with such a tidbit of knowledge, he would not have even been able to guess for himself, “it also falls on her birthday every year, remember?” 

Jade made a small ‘ah’ of acknowledgement, but Dave quieted down in thought. On the one hand he truly had forgotten it would be his birthday soon. The reminder was alike being drenched in icy water. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d looked up answers as to how late his puberty could truly kick in or even the number of nightmares he woke up from in which he’d suddenly hit a growth spurt or his Adam’s apple had made an unwanted and large appearance. Sixteen truly would start being a late age for his puberty to be delayed further back and he was hitting that age, apparently, in less than a week. On the other hand, he also felt his temperature drop with a massive sense of guilt, feeling he should be growing accustomed to by now. Throughout the years, Rose had always seemed to be in a dark mood during their birthday celebrations. Dirk never prepared anything, so he’d always relied on Roxy’s hospitality on his birthday, with little regard to Rose’s bad mood. It seemed more than obvious now she must have been nervous for her studying, or for the time Dave was taking away from it. 

Dave only snapped back to the present situation once he felt John stand up next to him, the warmth of his presence already sorely missed as he turned towards the door. “I’ll catch you two later.” 

He turned around, pressing his lips together as he observed the abrupt departure. Maybe he’d been embarrassed to know such intimate details about Rose in the first place. Or maybe he was miffed by Dave’s lack of reaction. Or maybe he too was nervous about that so called study week. Dave pulled at his sweater’s sleeves, resisting the urge to bite at the hem of the sleeve and wondering if it was the norm for teenaged students to feel so anxious about their academic achievements or if it was exclusive to Rose’s school. 

“Don’t mind him. He just wanted me to ask you something. Also wanted to not be around when I did.” 

“Huh” was Dave’s eloquent response, though he didn’t skip a beat when accepting Jade’s offered container of sliced strawberries. 

“Yeah, you know how he gets. He doesn’t want you to know that he thinks you’re awesome and that he cares, even if it’s obvious. He’ll think he’s less cool or something.” 

Dave laughed a bit at that, recognising a pattern of behaviour in Jade’s description not unlike his own. It wasn’t unlike his idolisation of his father, though he knew it must have been painfully obvious, he rarely said anything positive towards his guardian. 

“I don’t get it though, what’s that got to do with anything?” 

“He wants you to stay over at our place for the first weekend of study week. You know, to study together and to potentially celebrate your birthday, so that you’ll have a better time than usual.” 

He picked at the fabric of his tights, not too entirely sure how he felt about Jade claiming she knew how Rose felt about her birthdays, even though she’d never spoken to her before the start of the tenth grade, before Rose had been gone altogether and replaced by her doppelgänger. It seemed pretty obvious, however, that the obligation for Rose to spend her birthday with Dave every year didn’t seem to be a great deal or bonus. 

“I know I will,” Dave muttered, thinking of Rose and of how she’d be free to celebrate however she pleased come Sunday morning, when it would officially be her birthday. Saturday night, nearing midnight, that was Dave’s designated birthday. 

They continued eating the sliced strawberries until they had all vanished, and only then did Jade bring up the subject again. 

“So? Is that a yes?” 

“Yeah, course. I’ll just check with my mom first,” Dave replied easily, smiling at Jade’s beaming expression, “and for now, my only request is to head inside so I don’t lose both my fingers and ears to hypothermia.” 

Jade almost bounced as she made her way back inside, not at all seeming guilty as she emerged from the designated door for emergency exits. “John will be so happy! I mean, obviously I am too. It’s just going to be a great time, Rose, you’ll see!” 

Dave smiled weakly at the reminder of his twin’s name and shrugged his shoulders at Jade. 

“What can I say, I aim to please.” 

The day dragged on once they had parted for their afternoon classes. And once the trio was reunited at the end of the day, no mention of the potential sleepover was made in front of John, though Dave didn’t think he was imagining the looseness in John’s shoulders as he smiled casually at everything and nothing. His mother arrived to pick him up an hour after the end of his classes, as they had agreed to weeks prior when the Harley-Egbert twins had begun monopolising his time. He both felt happy that Roxy was happy for his new friend group and sad that he could easily share that information with her, but not with Rose. 

It was all too easy to bring up the first weekend of study break in the confines of the car, he received an easy approval with the only tradeoff of promising to be home relatively early in the evening Sunday, so that Roxy could prepare his, or Rose’s, favourite cake. 

It was late in the night, after finishing all of his homework, some of it well in advance, that he pulled Rose’s laptop away from her desk and settled on the bed with it, pyjamas already on and teeth already brushed. He smiled, both touched and guilty, when he found that Rose had pestered him as early as the end of his school day.

**\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 5:05 -- **

TG: Dave, I am not sure when you will log on, but I really wanted, needed, you to know that I’m here for you. I know that in reality I’ve been fairly absent, but you’re very dear to me and your happiness matters to me, alright? If you’ve had enough with this, I can cut things short for Christmas time. I can just feign homesickness, it’s not that farfetched. I don’t care if we have to shave our heads off when I come home to make it a successful switch, it’ll be worth it if you’re more at ease.  
TG: I’m sorry that’s not what I told you straight away. That was a mistake. I was feeling overwhelmed and could not see how much you were suffering. I know I haven’t always been the most understanding and I can be selfish at times, but that doesn’t mean you should sacrifice yourself for my sake. Please forgive me. 

**\-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 5:55 -- **

Dave read the words carefully, repeatedly, until eventually they seemed blurry on the screen. He put a hand over his chest, rubbing mindlessly as he let Rose’s words sink in. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken or communicated with him in such an expressive manner. Surely, she’d been torturing herself all day with the memory of Dave’s freakout, and here he had been having a regular, almost fun, day. 

Quickly he pestered her back, disregarding the time on the digital clock of the laptop. 

**\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 11:37 -- **

TT: sorry for the late reply  
TT: i was busy having a normal day and not like an end of the world day  
TT: i overreacted yesterday please dont worry  
TT: i just hadnt seen bro since  
TT: well you know  
TT: the airport  
TT: messed with my emotions i think  
TT: im not backing out on you now  
TT: ive got you covered  
TT: dont torture yourself thinking of me  
TT: im fine  
TT: i always am  
TG: Oh, Dave. It’s not ‘torture’. I’m your sister. I care. Even if sometimes I’m a little delayed in showing that. I can’t very well sit back as you’re going through life totally miserable.  
TT: honest i was just miserable yesterday  
TT: today was actually pretty good  
TG: Really? That’s great! I’m happy to hear it. I’d love to hear more about your day. 

His hands were ready to type out a decent, even honest, answer. But any attempts of formulating ‘i might have friends’ were promptly erased. He hadn’t gotten any permission from Rose to go and befriend anyone. Especially not the most popular duo of her grade. And, even less so, waltz out of Roxy’s house to go attend a sleepover. If bathrooms were synonymous to disastrous secret identity reveals, sleepovers had to be even more so. There was no way Rose could support, endorse, or recommend that he go through with this. But, perhaps selfishly, or perhaps in an attempt to feel even remotely less lonely, he kept that to himself. 

TG: Hey?  
TG: You’re not making this up just so that I stop worrying, right? Because I told you, I will come home. You’ve already stuck in there for a long time, you’ve done enough.  
TT: no no!!  
TT: im not lying  
TT: its just hard to put into words  
TT: im just happy  
TT: ish?  
TT: its kind of good to be away from dirk  
TT: and be close to mom  
TT: closeish?  
TT: i just feel normal i guess  
TT: might seem weird to you but for a freak like me ya know  
TG: You’re not a freak. Dave, you’re a great person. And it might not seem that way yet because we’re still young, but trust me when I say that there aren’t exclusively great people out there. You should be proud of yourself. 

Dave rubbed at his eyes, feeling both tired and emotionally strained. He could have sworn, reading Rose’s words, that she was feeling bitter or that she might have been hiding something from him. He did want to inquire, but the next thing he knew lullaby music was playing, the laptop was still warm where it was hibernating over his stomach and the skies were dark in contrast to the light he hadn’t turned off last night. He’d fallen asleep before giving any reply, but as he checked quickly for Rose’s replies, none appeared. Maybe she too had fallen asleep or, perhaps, she had not wanted to say anything more on the subject at all. 

It turns out they don’t speak again before the fated sleepover, mostly, probably, because Dave is avoiding any and all conversation. Rose’s praise, that he was a great person, followed him everywhere, made him feel as if his chest was glowing. That mention, though, also haunted him. What sort of great person would accept to put their plan at risk by attending some frivolous event at the popular kids’ house; all for what? To feel like he was part of something? To feel like he belonged? To feel loved? 

Inarguably, he did feel all of those things throughout the week, spending long portions of his day, every day, with the twins, and feeling as though he was part of their small clique, as if he mattered. It was enough support to keep him away from contacting Rose and enough to carry him through to the end of the week. Friday night was the biggest challenge as he stared at the loops of Jade’s handwriting on the note she’d handed to him, setting out her home address for the following day. He wanted the best odds on his side, he wanted to turn to Rose to check for last minute tips on how to best embody her for an entire weekend with so-called friends. 

And though that yearning followed him up to the moment his mother pulled into the Harley-Egbert driveway, it was easily overwhelmed by his sense of guilt and of disappointment. Though he could have sworn he had the best of intentions, he had, in the end, done next to nothing to prepare or ready himself for the outing. Really, he just wanted to be himself and to enjoy his birthday, even if today was Dave’s birthday and Rose’s would only be on the following day. 

He hugged the white, seemingly unused, backpack he’d found amidst Rose’s collection of bags, where he’d stored several schoolbooks, though he was guessing they wouldn’t be taking any real time to study over the weekend. He wasn’t quite sure if the road they were going down could be qualified as a driveway, as they had passed the gates of the estate a few metres back and the road still stretched ahead, framed by impressive oak trees. It might be hard to be himself amidst a setting that so resembled Rose’s luxurious lifestyle and seemed more than foreign to the, perhaps well-off, but modest lifestyle he had grown up with. Even the oak trees seemed more generous in proportions than the one-bedroom apartment he truly considered to be his home. He still believed he could let his personality shine through, just for the one day, all the while presenting as his sister. 

“I’ll have my phone with me all day, so if anything comes up and you want to come home early, just call.” 

He couldn’t read Roxy’s expression with the overly large yet fashionable sunglasses she was sporting. Though Prada was definitely not the brand Dirk and him liked wearing, the air of familiarity still rang true. And perhaps that was why, after she’d kissed his forehead in goodbye, he leaned forward towards the front seats to wrap his arms around her, resting his head on her shoulder for a second or two and pulling away from the hug, he knew for a fact, was not in Rose’s habits. 

Roxy didn’t seem to mind as she simply smiled brighter and patted his shoulder lovingly. 

“Oh, and I’ll see you when you’re sixteen!” 

Dave managed to grin as he reminded himself that technically, he hadn’t yet reached sixteen either, he would only once the clock would be minutes away from midnight. 

In true Rose fashion, he would never forget just how methodically she packed for their family trips and how her suitcase never failed to dwarf his, he had prepared a small suitcase for the night over. Roxy left the car just as he did to help him pull it out from the car’s trunk. He was stopped as soon as his sneakers, Rose’s really, hit the snow-covered gravel. 

There, sitting in an eyrie, yet in an unthreatening way, was a dog. A childhood spent researching decent pets to propose to his guardian, project he’d never carried to an end, made it so that he recognised the breed as a samoyed. The white coat and black upturned lips made the recognition inevitable, but its giant proportions were really what threw Dave off. That and, of course, the fact that the dog had been no where in sight just a few moments earlier. 

“Yo, buddy, hope you actually live here. In any case, please don’t eat me,” he spoke in a hurried and low pace, glancing over at Roxy where she was taking out his miniature suitcase which was, if he was not incorrect, of an even more impressive brand than the bag he used for school. 

As he took a careful step towards her, the dog stood up and followed after him. 

“Uhm…” 

His hesitation drew the attention of his mother who, almost predictably, squealed in delight at the sight of the monstrously proportioned dog whose coat matched the winter wonderland that had settled over their city. 

“You didn’t tell me your school friends had a dog!” 

“Well, they didn’t tell me either.” 

Just as he tried to take the last step away from the beast, the dog launched itself at him, or so Dave interpreted, as it put its paws over his shoulders and eagerly licked at his face. 

“Holy fucking shit, I’m dying, I’m dying,” he let out miserably, completely foregoing any pretence in reacting as Rose would have and hoping dearly that Rose would have been just as freaked out by the attack. 

He barely had time to feel relieved by the sound of Roxy’s soft laughter, both because he was still terrified by the size of the strangely fast moving dog, but also because the commotion he had caused must have drawn Jade from the inside of her house, or rather mansion, and she didn’t waste a second to match Dave’s volume of distress. 

“Becquerel Harley-Egbert, you let her go this instant!” 

She stomped over, all anger and impatience, but the dog, Becquerel, simply turned his head to look at her, tongue still lolling out; heavy weight still resting on Dave’s shoulders. 

“Please save me.” 

He’d scooted back as far as possible, now pressed against the Mercedes and trying to turn his head as far away as possible from the dog’s overly affectionate behaviour. 

He really only registered John’s boisterous laughter once Jade had coaxed Becquerel away. He stared in disbelief as John swiped through the pictures he’d taken on his phone to document Dave’s previous absolute horror, laughing so hard he had to push his glasses off to brush off his tears. 

“I’m so sorry, Ma’am, I promise we will take good care of your daughter. Bec is just as happy as us to have her over, I think.” 

Dave looked away from John’s uncontrolled laughter, somewhat surprised to see him showing such pure happiness, a look he had yet to see on him. He was much more surprised to see the way Jade had hoisted Becquerel into her arms, where he clung calmly to her. The dog had felt like tons earlier, but Jade seemed completely unbothered by the weight. 

“He’s a beauty. He, right?” Roxy asked with interest, approaching to pet behind Bec’s ears. 

Dave guessed she was preparing to start up a game of twenty questions about Jade’s dog, which definitely looked like an oversized baby now that he was resting his head on her shoulder sleepily, while still being carried. As such, he took his suitcase from Roxy and moved towards John who was slowly recovering from his fit of laughter. 

“You’re going to delete those pictures, right?” he asked, all false calm and composure. 

“Give me one good reason to delete and I definitely will,” John replied without missing a beat, still smiling brightly. His braces were green, he wondered if he’d gone to the orthodontist recently or if he hadn’t smiled that widely in a while. 

“You’ll be crushing my spirit and reputation if you keep those.” 

“I said good reason to delete, not good reason to keep.” 

They exchanged a quick, silent look, and soon enough they were laughing together. Nonetheless, Dave crossed his arms as John pulled up the pictures. He was silent as John continued to snicker at the snapped pictures, angling the phone so Dave would be able to witness the hilarity.

Despite his choice in clothing for the day, a simple and loose t-shirt and shorts to contradict the current cold weather, his resemblance to Rose was still more than uncanny on the photograph. Perhaps he could visit the hairdresser soon to get his hair shortened a bit… He both ignored the voice reminding him that he should be striving to be as close as possible to Rose’s image and the other strong reminder that if he were to go to the salon, it would be his very first time without his accompanying twin. 

A third topic he desperately tried to put aside was the image of his guardian, not even a week ago, and the unmistakable recognition that had occurred then. He stored that away for later, for late at night when the worry and panic would unquestionably keep him up. 

“Geez, don’t look so solemn, I was only kidding, I can delete it, no problem.” 

Dave snapped back into focus, slightly saddened to see John’s expression turn sourer, more similar to what he was used to. Instead of uncrossing his arms, he simply tightened them over his chest. 

“You can keep them, as long as you don’t share. Sorry, I was just lost in thought.” 

John must have sensed that the thought in question had been of meaning because soon he was bumping their shoulders together as he smiled privately at Dave. 

“Your mom seems to like Bec,” he pointed towards the pair still cooing over the large dog, “sometimes I feel like he’s more of a sibling to Jade than I am. You know, he sleeps on top of her every day!” 

“Yeah, but there is nothing I’d want less in the world than to have my brother sleeping on top of me.” 

“Fair point,” John conceded, large smile back in place. 

Dave smirked in return though his heart seemed heavier as he thought of his sister. He definitely wouldn’t want to share a bed with her, but it might have been nice to communicate with her today of all days. 

Before he knew it, Roxy was giving him a final wave goodbye and her car was pulling away. Jade had returned to his side, Becquerel in tow. 

“Your mom’s pretty awesome,” Jade stated easily, patting Becquerel’s head. 

“I guess so.” 

He lacked confidence in his reply as he stared at the back of the retreating car. Honestly, it had looked easier for Jade to connect with Roxy in that short conversation, than it had been for Dave in the last several months. Perhaps because he’d needed to emulate the relationship she had with Rose which, though seemed precious all things considered, was strained by Rose’s constant appearance of aloofness and detachedness. 

“Our dad’s still out at the Farmers’ Market, it’s like three towns over so it’ll be a while, but he swears by it.” 

John had grabbed Dave’s prepared suitcase by the handle as he briefly explained the absence of parental figures, leading the small group through the doorway of the home. 

“So, you ready for the grand tour?” Jade asked excitedly, clapping her hands together in habit. 

“Uhm…” he glanced around the foyer, the vastness of it so intimidating that the only detail his mind could cling to was the marble mosaic of the floors, “I get the slight feeling that I’ll have turned seventeen rather than sixteen by the time we finish a tour of this place.” 

Jade laughed, as good-naturedly as Dave was accustomed to hearing from her by now, but John only observed him silently, almost calculating in his gaze. 

“Then, just to be safe, I’ll show you the one room that actually matters. And then I’m sure John will show you his favourite room, but trust me, mine is way more essential than his.” 

The ‘hey!’ of outrage from John was to be expected and it did get a smile out of Dave, even despite the sudden sense of being overwhelmed the grand mansion was imposing on him. Not for the first time, he wondered if Rose would be better suited for the situation he found himself in. The Lalonde house was also incredibly impressive, he wasn’t quite sure if the two houses were comparable in price and style, but he knew they were both luxurious. Maybe he shouldn’t be so impressed by the décor? Would Rose have been? Should he even be after months of living in the Lalonde manor, really? 

Then again, Dave still felt on most days as if he were living on a set of a movie. Nothing about it had anything to do with his real life. The gated off mansion in the midst of a mystical forest lookalike was truly John and Jade’s home. 

The suitcase had been left by the front door, where Becquerel was scenting the newly appeared object, and Jade had headed towards the acclaimed room. Dave had been too lost in his introspection to notice the steps and direction they had taken to arrive in the area, but he didn’t need an explanation to the room. 

He’d stepped into a solarium, a sunroom, one easily larger than his and his father’s shared apartment. The architecture and the design of the glassed dome-like structure was certainly noteworthy, but definitely paled when observing the contents of the room. The room wasn’t simply an imposing and majestic sunroom, but also a greenroom. Dave could barely distinguish a path throughout the plants and flowers. 

With greater grace than he’d seen from Jade in the past, she dropped to a knee to pick up a fallen flower which she then tucked into her ponytail. Only once the flower tucked into place did Dave even realise there had been something slightly off about Jade’s appearance. To this day, he’d never seen her without a hibiscus included in her hairdo. 

She waved Dave closer to the plant where she showed him the other blossomed flowers which had yet to fall. “This one’s an Acapulco Gold, pretty, right?” 

Dave let his fingers skim lightly over the outer edges of the flower which were of a canary yellow, contrast to the burning orange that faded into it, and an even bigger contrast to the dark crimson of the centre of the flower. 

“Yeah, I mean, yeah. I wouldn’t have guessed that the flowers in your hair meant that you had a whole god damned botanical garden inside of your house though.” 

“Yo, Rose, this one’s the best one,” John called out from somewhere much further into the solarium, promptly enough to cut off any reply Jade could have given Dave. 

Without another thought, Dave ducked, dodged and swerved all the way to John’s position. The flower he found there was of a midnight blue, edges much darker as if they had been dipped into oil, with a centre that swirled outwards with a light blue that almost seemed bioluminescent in its colour. 

“This one is called Lowas, it’s probably the most famous flower discovered by our grandfather.” 

Before he had time to inquire on just who this grandfather was and why exactly his life legacy had been the discovery of famous flowers, Jade had reappeared next to him, seeming excited to elaborate on John’s words. 

“He was a renowned explorer and botanist of the region of French Polynesia!” 

“Oh… So that’s why you’re like…” Dave let his sentence in suspension, not sure if it would really be socially acceptable for him to complete the sentence. 

John’s expression seemed to pinch at the incomplete sentence, however. 

“Please don’t say ‘tanned’.” 

It was Dave’s turn to look at John strangely, “I was going to say loaded, actually. Or like, say that’s why your house looks like it’s the combination of five embassies.” 

“Oh! Well, not really. He was our mom’s father, so that’s why her place looks like that, but that’s in Tahiti…” a dreamy expression took over her features as she spoke. Perhaps she dreamed of escaping the recent snowfalls, though Dave had almost completely forgotten about those with the environment of the greenroom. 

“Dad was also born and raised in Tahiti. But his mother was the heiress to this huge American corporation which I won’t name because it’s embarrassing to be associated to it. But yeah, she just decided to leave the States one day and to live somewhere really different, I suppose. That’s why dad too is a little on the rich side.” 

The look on John’s face was quite different as he spoke, almost far away, contemplative and a tad nostalgic. 

Dave hummed in acknowledgement, bending down to pick up a fallen Lowas blossom. “Why did your father move back here, do you know?” 

“Yeah, his mother got really sick. She wanted to come back to make sure her will and estate and all that was in order, and then I guess she got pretty close to a medical team here and never got the chance to head back. Our father followed along with us because he didn’t want to miss any of the last few moments.” 

John’s air intensified this time, but he didn’t add anything more. Eventually, Jade piped in to complete the missing details. 

“And then, you know what they say, America’s the land of opportunity. He thought maybe it would be a better place for our education, we were about to start kindergarten, John and I… Our mother didn’t seem to agree. So that was the whole underlying theme of their divorce. We did end up staying here, and we’ve been in pretty elitist school establishments ever since.” 

Dave nodded, at a loss on what he could possibly say on the subject. He realised that must have been a lot more information than he’d ever gotten on the twins’ personal life and history until now. All and all, the subjects they’d breezed through just now were more than a bit heavy. 

“So that’s the whole scoop. We’re loaded because of old money,” John paused, still seeming far too observant for Dave’s comfort, “how about you?” 

“How about me?” 

“Yeah, I mean, the whole school is rich, it’s not just us, it’s you too,” Jade clarified in an all too curious voice. 

“Why am I loaded? Uh, well… My mom, she…” 

She what exactly? She was a scientist, right? Was she in the field of research? He had the sneaking suspicion that if the twins were to conduct a google search on her subject, they would have details a whole lot more interesting than what Dave could supply them with. 

“I mean, she works a lot,” Dave finally settled on, quite shakily. 

Now that he gave it a moment of thought, he had no idea who his grandparents were, he’d never given it a single thought in the past, he’d just never met any grandparents. Yet, Roxy and Dirk were bound to have parents. In fact, he could not even tell them why it was that his parents had decided on having Rose, despite no romantic involvement between the two. He couldn’t guess if Rose had more information than he did, but he knew he’d never asked or given it any attention. Yet, here Jade and John were giving a full exposé on their family tree and its accomplishments. 

“Hey, don’t sweat it. You don’t have to talk about it.” 

He grit his teeth in reaction to John’s words and his hand resting on his shoulder yet again. Though he’d managed not to flinch away, the flower he’d held in his hand was a little worse for wear as he’d gripped it tightly in reaction to the touch. 

Delicately, Jade pried the flower out of his hand and tucked it right behind his ear. Dave’s face quickly heated up with the movement, desperate to pull the flower off, yet not moving to do so. 

“Hibiscus are my favourite, sure because it does remind me of where John and I are from, but mostly because the life of a hibiscus bloom is so short. They wilt within twenty-four hours, you know? So that’s like ephemeral beauty at its finest. They’re so vibrant and colourful, even though they won’t get a chance to be for very long.” 

Dave let his hands fall limply to his sides. He wasn’t entirely sure if Jade was trying to speak through metaphors, and if she were, what exactly she was referencing, but he felt a pang of sadness nonetheless. He thought of his sister, who wore the name of a flower and thought again of his poor imitation of her, of how ridiculously out of place he currently felt. 

It was John again who pulled him out of such thoughts, when he casually commented on the flower, following Jade’s serious comments. 

“Just be careful with that, Rose. The one time she made me wear one, there was an ant inside of the flower and it crawled into my ear. I’m pretty sure she did it on purpose, she thinks she compares to me on the pranking level, but it was super mean-spirited.” 

“Was not! I didn’t even know about that!” 

“I think it was a fire ant too.” 

“Oh please, you haven’t seen a fire ant in your life!” 

As they started bickering, Dave lost focus, his gaze wandering from corner to corner as he took in the various species of flowers which occupied the solarium. He wondered if Rose would be appalled by the room or if she would like it. He wondered then, if he actually liked it or not, or if he was starting to get confused by what he should and shouldn’t like in order to pass as his sister. He longed for his room back at his real home, were his numerous hobbies waited for him. He longed for the confirmation that Dirk had not recognised him or at the very least he wanted him to confess that he did recognise Dave and that it made little to no difference to him that he had helped Rose execute this plan. But the crestfallen attitude that Dirk had displayed at the airport on the day of her departure still haunted him enough to convince him that Dirk was not all that indifferent towards the situation. 

“That’s it. We’re showing Rose the real best room of the place,” John declared provocatively. 

In their enthusiasm to find out with who Dave would side, they both grabbed one of his arms and dragged him out of the sunroom. Dave who had not at all been keeping up with the flow of the conversation. 

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, maybe an indoor amusement park, rollercoasters included, or even a pool filled with the actual water of their home island, but a movie theatre room seemed a lot more reasonable. It was impressive, with a screen taking up an entire wall, and a bar area where a popcorn machine and all other movie snack essentials were at the ready, but it was far less extravagant than a solarium housing rare species of hibiscus flowers. The life-size posters that were framed and adorning the walls made the room all the more human. 

“These movies are all terrible. I mean like, really, these are pretty shitty movies. How did they get a place of honour in what John calls the best room of the house?” 

His words had the expected effect of pushing Jade into a fit of laughter, the sound quickly becoming familiar to Dave, but the genuine gasp of distress and offense John made was something that beat out any previous dramatic expressions of John’s. 

“Because they’re classics of American cinema, all signed by the stars of the films, by the way!” 

“But… This one over here if the Family Man, it doesn’t even qualify as a classic Christmas movie, let alone a legendary film of cinema altogether.”

“What! That movie has made such a colossal difference on so many people out there. The one true lesson by Hollywood of the wholesomeness of family life.” 

With that, Dave had joined in on Jade’s excessive laughter, clutching his sides as he curled over, laughing too hard to try to be Rose-like about it. 

“Wow, rude! And what is your favourite movie exactly, pray tell?” 

The question put a successful end to Dave’s carefree laughter. What was Rose’s favourite movie exactly? She liked wizards, he knew that much. What film outside of the Harry Potter franchise featured them, though? The only titles that came to his mind were of the independent, Sundance winners variety. 

“That information happens to be a federally kept secret,” Dave retorted in a practiced line he’d always used on Dirk to keep away from any heart-to-heart discussions. 

John opened his mouth, surely to prod further, but was interrupted by his sister as she dove onto one of the theatre seats. 

“That’s not the point, she’s seen both rooms, now she can tell us which room is the overall best. And it’s going to be mine, I know so.” 

“I haven’t gathered enough evidence to render a judgement, I would say.” He took the seat next to Jade with poise, crossing his arms to add emphasis to the seriousness of his critique. “I’m fairly certain there is one hundred rooms or more that I’ve yet to feast my eyes on. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an actual stage in this place, or something.” 

John leaned over the back of their seats at that, looking as if he were about to announce that their estate did in fact house a miniature Palais Garnier. 

“Well, we do have a music room. If you want we can jam together, we’re bound to have a violin in there that suits your taste. I’ll accompany you, and Jade can hit some notes on whichever instrument of her choice.” 

Jade argued back in an offended fashion and Dave more or less froze up. 

“I’m willing to play some Paganini, if Rose agrees to play some Rachmaninoff,” John continued, as he explained to his sister why her skills on the electric guitar were beside his planned jam session. 

“Dude,” he offered weakly in protest, “I don’t play anymore. I mean it. If you’ve got like a Midi Fighter up there, I’ll play that. But none of this classical stuff, that’s in the past now.” 

His words had the desired effect on John, who seemed too confused by the terms used in the sentence to present his own argument, but apparently the lexicon wasn’t too removed from Jade who, as he’d just seen, wasn’t as classically oriented as her twin. 

“You can also DJ? Wow!” 

“What? DJ? You’ve never even been to a school dance before!” John proclaimed, seeming a little thrown off by where the conversation was heading. As a matter of fact, so was Dave. 

“What about homework?” Dave threw out there as a last resort distraction, pointing his thumb backwards to indicate the backpack he had been carrying around the house this whole time. 

“Homework…?” 

His statement, seemingly, had only further confused John. Jade, a little quicker to understand Dave’s suggestion, took a hold of the handle of the backpack, weighing it somewhat. 

“Oh my god, you actually brought homework? You’re… Motivated.” 

Dave crossed his arms a little more tightly over his chest, feeling somewhat defensive. 

“Grades matter,” he said through gritted teeth. 

They had never truly mattered in the past. His pass or fail education had never been a source of problems. But he still found that he wasn’t lying as he spoke. They mattered in the sense that they had always seemed to matter to Rose and he was trying to do right by her. He hadn’t at all been present for her in the past days, the least he could do is conserve a pristine life she could return to once the year was up. 

“But not as much as food, right? Because I think Dad is probably back by now. Have we mentioned he’s the greatest cook there is? And baker too, must be his mom’s legacy.” 

Admittedly, Dave came to agree with John’s affirmation as the day progressed. Not only were both the lunch and the supper provided by the elder Egbert (not Harley, he found out) far beyond the skills of any dish he’d eaten in a restaurant in the past, snacks and food seemed to be a constant throughout the day. By the time the moon had risen, he was clutching at his bloated stomach helplessly. 

In a lot of regards, the twins’ guardian strongly reminded him of Dirk. Though he was polite and amiable, he didn’t waste his words. He seemed detached, yet caring. It was slowly dawning on him that, yes, despite all of his flaws, Dirk was every part the caring parent as Mister Egbert seemed to be. 

The day, aside from the few moments that would often grip him in a fear of being in the wrong place and not being the right embodiment of his sister, really only seemed like an extended lunch period with Jade and John. It was comfortable, easy, comforting; it was everything he thought friendship might translate to in person. Certain things he found odd, of course. The unexplainable vastness of the home housing only three and one dog. The fact that the twins’ father had spent a good part of his night preparing a tiered cake for breakfast the following morning, in honour of Rose’s birthday. The bedrooms of Jade and John, both located on different floors of the house, and neither of which he’d been invited to visit during his stay. The way Becquerel was friendly with everyone, including Dave, but seemed to prefer to ignore John’s existence. The black pearls John wore around his wrist even after changing into his pyjamas. 

Weirdest, maybe, was that neither of the twins had insisted in the morning that their observatory room was by far the most impressive room of their manor. The glass dome was even larger than the greenhouse’s, the telescope, too expensive for Dave to even dare look at. And, with the way their home was slightly removed from more inhabited areas of their city, the night sky painted a beautifully clear tableau above their heads, mapping out different constellations and cosmic beings. 

Even though the pillows, air mattresses and blankets set out were all comfy and of good quality, he was questioning if he could fall asleep under the stars as Jade had already done, judging by her light snoring. Besides, his restlessness would come in handy when he’d have to sneak off a level down to get to the bathroom and remove his coloured contact lenses. For now, he simply made sure to hike his blanket up to his chin, though he knew his choice of pyjamas wasn’t going to reveal a more boyish figure than per usual, he felt better under its protection. 

John, on the other hand, was atop his blankets, seeming unconcerned with anything and everything. Arms crossed under his head as he stared off to the sky. 

“So,” Dave spoke slowly, not wanting to wake Jade up, “Jade wears a hibiscus daily. You know, like, the native Tahitian flower. So like, those black pearls you wear, also a Tahiti thing?” 

John brought his hand up, observing the bracelet as if he hadn’t noticed it in a while. 

“Got it in one. It’s a bracelet of Tahitian pearls. Must seem a little extravagant, I bet…” 

Dave snorted.

“Not more extravagant than having both a greenhouse and an observatory in your family house, trust me.” 

John shrugged with a grin, letting his hand fall towards Dave, who was occupying the centre mattress, between Jade and John. 

“I’ve had it for ages. When I was like, I don’t know, probably a toddler. My mother took me to a pearl farm. It just seemed awesome to me. Ever since, it’s been my dream to work at one. That’s why I’m already a certified diver and why I’m thinking of studying marine biology, I guess. Though, I’m sure it would be easy to get hired, it’s kind of a driving force of the economy there.” 

Dave nodded along, listening attentively to every detail John was offering. 

“Would you say that’s like your happiest childhood memory?” 

A pause, and then a hesitant answer. 

“I guess so. It’s funny though, Jade hated the whole thing, she cried for hours, pleading to go home to watch some show on television, I think. Mom got her this beautiful, long necklace of pearls. I don’t think she’s ever really worn it, it’s still back home in her bedroom in Tahiti, I think. I got this bracelet and it’s never really come off except to be readjusted throughout the years.” 

“Do you get the chance to go a lot? Back home, like you said.” 

“Every Christmas, mostly. Best tradeoff for completing exams.” 

Dave hummed, still pulling his blanket even further up. It was surprising how upset he felt at the idea of the twins being so far removed from him during the winter break. They’d only recently met and, really, they didn’t know the first real thing about Dave. They really only knew Rose, or at least believed they knew her but weren’t quite sharp enough to pick up when it was truly her or just an imitation. 

“How about you?” 

Dave nearly jumped in surprise at John’s voice. He made sure his pulse had slowed before turning his head and giving him a short and questioning “huh?” 

“What’s your fondest childhood memory?” 

He swallowed, trying to push down the automatic recollection of memories. He wouldn’t have been able to say that specific day had been the most memorable, the happiest, the most precious of his memories, and yet… It was the one to come to his mind. 

“Uh, well… I guess. Going to an airshow. Maybe I was around the same age as you, I’m not sure? But we watched the F-15 jets blast through the city skies and it was — the loudest thing I’d ever heard. There were so many people I clutched my… My parent’s hand the whole time, I was scared we’d be separated. I guess it was nothing special, but there you have it.” He breathed in deep, replacing the word father by parent in his speech with just some difficulty. “I guess I feel pretty guilty about it too. Feels like the fondest memory should at the very least include my twin. I know Jade was crying in yours, but it’s already better than being totally absent.” 

“Hey,” John continued, in a voice that was only fitting for an hour nearing midnight, in the complete darkness save for the faraway lights of the universe, “what would you say is the opposite word to guilty?” 

Without a moment of thought Dave answered, “guiltless. Why?” 

“You just seem like you often feel guilty. Maybe it’s a pattern you should break.” 

The shrug that accompanied the words, the casual worry that stayed underlying was unusual, yet it managed to warm Dave’s face and seemingly the palms of his hands. 

“I think that might be impossible.” He lowered his voice, both hoping John would be too tired and sleepy to remember on the following day and hoping if he did that he could pass it off as himself feeling too tired and sleepy and speaking nonsense. “I feel guilty about even being born, so it’s a tall order to change that now.” 

John reached across, and this time, held Dave’s hand. If Dave moved his thumb just so, he’d be able to feel the surface of the black pearls around his wrist. 

“I’m thankful you were born, I think you’re amazing.” 

There was a beat of silence in which Dave’s chest seemed to get heavier and heavier with an unknown and unidentifiable emotion; he could not fathom if it was a positive or a negative one, but it was certainly making it much more of a challenge to breathe normally. 

Finally, John spoke again, in a voice that was more than of a hint that he was a few seconds away from hitting full unconsciousness. It was but a simple and whispered “happy birthday, Rose.” 

It was enough that Dave had to furiously blink to keep water from escaping his eyes. He agreed that Rose was amazing. He wondered, idly, if it was past midnight yet or not, if John had managed to wish him a happy birthday on the correct date or not. He wondered what the correct date truly was given the current context of his situation. He wondered if ‘guiltless’ would even be feasible after a full year of this charade. 

It was both painful and a great relief to pry his hand out of John’s in order to clandestinely store away his contacts without anyone seeing the red of his eyes. 

Upon his return, he made the discovery that John snored just as steadily as Jade did. The soundtrack was surprisingly calming enough to lull him into a light sleep. 

He thanked all the stars in the sky when he managed to wake up before either one of the twins. Winter was well on its way with the morning sky still as dark as can be. He repeated the same trek down to the bathroom. 

He spent more than a few minutes trying to comb down his hair with water in the bathroom mirror. Not for the last time, he wondered if he should get his cut freshened up, probably not at his usual hair salon. 

He was having a stare-off with his reflection when the bathroom door burst open. He almost fell down in his panic as he turned towards the intruder who was… None other than John; whose hair looked as messy as Dave’s had a few moments prior to. 

“Woah! I’m so sorry, actually, I should’ve known you were in here, you weren’t still up there, but I don’t know, I figured maybe you were in the kitchen, eating cake? We can do that in a moment, after I pee, and you pee too, I guess? I don’t know, I’m sorry, please say something!” 

The stream of spoken thought did nothing to calm down Dave’s sudden fast pulse and breathing. His one rule of avoiding public bathrooms once again coming back to put his choices to shame. With an embarrassed and aggravated huff, Dave covered his eyes with one hand, feeling stupid as he drew attention to the feature John had failed to comment on and, hopefully, to notice. 

“Hey, what’s up? Don’t tell me you’re freaking out over turning sixteen?” 

Dave heard John take a step closer and, knowing there was no easy way of stepping out of his current position. He simply let his hand fall away to reveal his eyes. 

“Please don’t tell anyone,” he mumbled shamefully. He was unsure if he was most worried about Rose finding out he’d done this much damage in the time he’d spent trying to give her a year away from her home life, or if he was more concerned with showing his eyes like this. 

“What? I— I didn’t know your eyes were this colour, it’s not a big deal though?” 

Dave gave him an unimpressed look, turning back to the mirror to fish out the contact lens case he’d stored in the pouch of the hoodie he’d worn to bed. 

“I hate it. It makes me feel like a freak. I’d trade with anyone else in the world for any other set of eyes imaginable.” 

He didn’t bother to hide his honest disgust and discontent, steadily putting the contacts back into place after months of practice in doing so. He blinked his newly brown eyes and finally faced away from the reflection to meet John’s still worried eyes. 

“Again, don’t tell anyone, but this is the one thing about myself I’m most self-conscious about. I don’t know, must sound silly, or like you said, not that big of a deal, yet I can’t stand it. I wish no one else in the world had to ever see them.” 

He took a deep breath, trying to remind himself to tone down the connotative vocabulary. Surely, this didn’t deserve as big a fuss as he was making. Surely, Rose would have never used such extreme words solely to describe an insecurity. 

“I’m sorry I walked in,” John whispered more than a little guiltily. 

“It’s alright, John. I trust you, so I know you probably don’t care about something like that and that you won’t go blabbing to anyone and everyone.” 

He’d barely finished speaking that John had stepped forward and pulled him into crushing hug. Dave made a small choking sound before clutching back at John, sinking into the embrace with a lot less hesitance than he deserved to display. He was briefly concerned with having his body pressed up against John’s, still terrified of slipping up and being revealed as Rose’s freaky twin who couldn’t pull anything off. But instead, moments passed and the tightness and care in the hug never lessened. 

“I promise I’ll keep it to myself. I’ll do everything I can to show that I deserve your trust, alright?” John said with surprising ease as he pulled away from Dave. 

The guilt he’d been dragging around in the past months seemed to amplify then, moving up from overwhelming to suffocating to truly and otherworldly unbearable. He smiled brokenly, hating himself a little more for playing with people’s trust with so little remorse. 

Eating cake in the morning proved to be just as hard on his stomach as he’d foreseen, and that fact was only increased by that heavy weight of guilt, still crushing him down. 

His only selfish pleasure and comfort of the day was finding out, on the ride back home, sitting in the backseat of Roxy’s car, that Dirk had decided to start partaking again in their weekly get-together, specifically this one to help celebrate Rose’s sixteenth. 

The hug he’d given his guardian upon seen him was a very faithful imitation to how John had approached and hugged him in that bathroom, without a worry on display. 

When he’d pulled away from Dirk, he’d seemed to radiate happiness, speaking only loud enough for Dave to hear, “I love you, kid.” 

He found himself believing the words and, this time, not at all doubting that Dirk knew it was him and had not meant those words for Rose, but specifically for him, for Dave. It was a subject he was unable to bring up with Rose when he’d video chatted her that night to wish her an enjoyable sixteenth birthday. It was one of the many subjects he felt unable to share with his twin. 

The next two weeks advanced in a flurry of snowflakes and of studying sessions. Guilt never quite leaving Dave, but becoming almost a comforting presence in his everyday life. 

Following his very last exam, the theoretical exam for his art classes. He’d finally returned the hug John had given him to both him and Jade as they parted ways in front of the school. 

“We’ll see you in the new year, Rose! Anything you want from the Pacific Ocean?” Jade asked cheerfully, ignoring both John and Dave’s misty-eyed looks at not being able to spend time together for the next month. 

“Uhm, I guess you could bring back some sunshine. Maybe a few pictures.” 

His voice felt a bit strangled, but he was satisfied that he’d been able to answer at all; John in comparison had not spoken once after the conclusion of their last exam. 

“Snap a few pictures of your Christmas too, then! Rest well and stop worrying about those grades, alright?” 

Dave nodded and watched the duo leave in a taxi, supposedly off to the airport where their father would be waiting for them with their packed luggage. 

He breathed out loudly as he marched to his mother’s car, undisturbed by the steady fall of snowflakes. He was looking forward to a Christmas with Dirk, who knew who he was and Roxy, who would not be distracted by private celebrations that excluded him, as she still believed he was his sister. He managed to convince himself he didn’t feel too guilty about settling with video chats with his sister, rather than her presence alongside him for the holidays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a year and a half! Hopefully I still know how to write... Let me know what you think! Thanks to those of you who are still reading and for new readers alike <3333

**Author's Note:**

> A million times thank you to my Beta Reader, you are my greatest help. And many, many thanks to all of my friends who listen to me complain about writing. 
> 
> Hope you will all enjoy this one!


End file.
